Delta Pavonis

[jude_rook]

There sure seem to be a lot of possibilities located just under 20 light years from us!  Delta Pavonis is right under the wire at 19.9.  It’s a G8IV yellow star, the “IV” meaning it’s on the verge (in astronomical time) of becoming a red giant.  Not a good prospect for anyone wanting to live on a planet there, although who knows?  Maybe in a few centuries we’ll be able to say, “Ah, yes, this star will go red-giant in exactly 415,381 years plus or minus 85 years, so until then, any settlers will be perfectly safe.”  And the prospective settlers will ask themselves, “Hmm, do I feel lucky?”

The star’s metallicity appears to be more than double Sol’s, and it’s over 6 billion years old, so it’s a good bet for planets, although astronomers have not detected any as yet.

Anyway, Delta Pavonis will always have a special place in SF as the star orbited by Caladan, home planet of Paul Atreides in Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series.  Lots of other SF writers have used it too; for some reason, it has been much more popular than some other, likelier choices for our purposes.

The Epsilon Indi system is about 12 light years away from Sol and about 9 from Delta Pavonis.  If Delta Pavonis hosted a spacefaring civilization and Epsilon Indi had a useful uninhabited world, it could be the trigger that started an interstellar war between peace-loving humanity and those evil, power-crazed Deltans.

Comments

[dsgood]

One possible reason for Delta Pavonis's popularity -- it's easier to figure out the correct pronunciation than with some other star names.