Introduced by Johann Bayer in 1603 it is one of a series of celestial birds in this region of the sky including Apus, Grus, Phoenix and Tucana. The constellation cannot be seen from Britain as it is located close to the south pole star.
In mythology the peacock was sacred to Juno, goddess of the
heavens. According to legend Juno sent a creature with 100 eyes called Argus to
watch over a white heifer; Juno guessed that this heifer was the form into
which her husband Jupiter had turned one of illicit lovers the nymph Io.
At Jupiter’s request Mercury decapitated the watchful Argus
and released the heifer. Juno place the 100 eyes of Argus on the peacock’s
tail.
The Chinese also saw the constellation as a peacock and
called it Joo Tseo
Alpha also known as peacock magnitude 1.9 and is a B class star with a surface temperature of 17,000’C lying at a distance 179 light years.
The second brightest star is Beta with a magnitude of
3.4 and is an A class star with a
temperature of 8,000’C and is 135 light years away.
NGC 6752 a globular cluster. It is the third brightest in
the sky, with a magnitude of 5.4 after Omega Centauri and 47 Tucanae, NGC 6752
was first identified by one James Dunlop of Parramatta, Australia on 30 June
1826, who described it as an irregular bright nebula which could be resolved
into a cluster of many stars, highly compressed at the centre. This corresponds
with a core region densely populated with stars around 1.3 light-years in
diameter,
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