brilliant star Canopus and the Large Magellanic Cloud in the Southern
Celestial Hemisphere. Normally represented as an easel, Pictor was
invented and named by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in the 18th century. The
constellation's brightest star is Alpha Pictoris, a white main sequence
star of apparent magnitude 3.3. Pictor also hosts RR Pictoris, a
cataclysmic variable star system that flared up as a nova in 1925,
reaching magnitude 1.2. Pictor's second-brightest star, Beta Pictoris,
is surrounded by an unusual dust disk rich in carbon. HD 40307, an
orange dwarf, has six planets orbiting it, one of which—HD 40307
g—is a potential super-Earth in the circumstellar habitable zone.
Kapteyn's Star, the nearest star in Pictor to Earth, is a red dwarf
12.76 light-years away that was found to have two super-Earths in orbit
in 2014. Pictor A is a radio galaxy that is shooting a jet of plasma
800,000 light-years long from a supermassive black hole at its centre.
In 2006, a gamma ray burst—GRB 060729—was observed in Pictor; its
X-ray afterglow was detectable for nearly two years afterwards.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictor>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1874:
In one of the longest cases ever heard in an English court, the
defendant was convicted of perjury for attempting to assume the identity
of the heir to the Tichborne baronetcy.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tichborne_case>
1893:
USS Indiana, the lead ship of her class and the first
battleship in the United States Navy comparable to foreign battleships
of the time, was launched.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indiana_(BB-1)>
1914:
In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, Greeks living in southern
Albania proclaimed the Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_Republic_of_Northern_Epirus>
1986:
Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated by a lone
gunman in Stockholm while walking home from a movie theatre with his
wife Lisbet Palme.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olof_Palme>
2002:
During the 2002 Gujarat violence in India, mobs of Hindus
attacked Muslims in Naroda Patiya and Chamanpura, resulting in 166
deaths.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulbarg_Society_massacre>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
unbirthday:
A day that is not one's birthday but is celebrated as though it were
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unbirthday>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The advantage of living
is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and
lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will,
not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.
--Michel de Montaigne
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michel_de_Montaigne>
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