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Hera, wife of Zeus and hence the Queen of the heavens, was an excessively jealous wife. And with good reason; Zeus was excessively amorous. Scholars have assiduously traced at least fifty lovers and mistresses of this supreme Greek god. Io was one of these lovers. The trouble was, Io was one of Hera's priestesses, and Hera soon discovered the infidelity. To protect Io, Zeus transformed her into a heifer. But Hera was not fooled, and she claimed ownership over the heifer, then chose Argus Panoptes to guard the animal. As indicated by its name, Argus Panoptes was "all eyes". Indeed, the beast had one hundred eyes, which surely should have been sufficient to guard one small heifer. Zeus engaged Hermes with the task of rescuing Io. To avoid detection by one of Argus' one hundred eyes, Hermes charmed the animal with a flute when it was fast asleep, then threw a huge boulder on top of it, and for good measure cut off its head. An angry Hera set a gadfly to pester Io, who then roamed around most of the Mediterranean nations before finally settling down in Egypt, where Zeus changed her back into human form. She later established the worship of Isis in Egypt. As for the unfortunate Argus Panoptes, Hera put all of its many eyes on the tail of her sacred bird, the peacock. Only much later, in the seventeenth century, would the peacock itself become part of the heavenly zoo. Johann Bayer introduced the constellation in Uranometria in 1603, along with a number of other birds: Apus, Grus, Phoenix, and Tucana.
Pavo is a large constellation showing the tail of the peacock in full display. While the Bayer stars are not very bright, there are several deep sky objects of interest in the constellation.
Double stars:
Variable stars:
Deep Sky Objects:
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