Quote:
Originally Posted by Tropo-Bob
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Circumstances have not favoured me, but tonight, I finally had a chance to visually see Alpha to Epsilon Pyxidis through some small gaps in the clouds. With these conditions, I only observed these stars without optical aid. (except for my prescription glasses.)
Alpha and Beta are only about 2 degrees from each other and are the brightest stars in Pyxis. They 'point' to Gamma Pyxis, which is also seen reasonably at magnitude 4. Delta is only about one degree from Gamma, however, I had difficulty viewing it directly.
Epsilon Pyxidis was the most difficult to see and I could only view it sometimes with indirect vision.
Lambda Pyxidis appeared brighter than both Delta and Epsilon, which underlined the already known fact that the stars of constellations are not always strictly listed in orders of brightness.
I found it interesting to try and imagine these stars in 3D. Alpha is the most luminous, massive (it is a supernova candidate) and is twice as far away from the next furthest star, which is Beta. Indeed Beta is almost directly located half way between us and Alpha. Nevertheless, on any planet orbiting Beta, Alpha would be a far more impressive sight than our sun.