Delta Pavonis was the name of one-half of a binary system with its neutron star partner, Hades. The Delta Pavonis system is some 19.92 light years from Earth, the source of the system's name (the star is the fourth-brightest in the constellation of Pavo the peacock as seen from Earth).
Hades was ten light-hours away from Delta Pavonis. Eleven major planets orbited the pair -- including the former homeworld of the Amarantin, Resurgam, and the gas giant Roc -- along with asteroidal debris and comet fragments.
Circa 2511, the Lorean colonized one of its planets, Resurgam, with the archeological expedition of Dan Sylveste.
Over a century later another of its planets, Roc, was destroyed by the Inhibitors and its remains used as raw materiel for a device that caused Pavonis itself to wipe all remaining life off Resurgam and render it uninhabitable.
Description[]
Delta Pavonis was a chip of warm-red ambergris fixed at the middle, the system's eleven major planets spaced around it on their respective orbits, positioned at their true positions; smears of asteroidal debris and comet-shards following their own ellipses; the whole orrery haloed by a tenuous Kuiper belt of icy flotsam; tugged into slight asymmetry by the presence of the neutron star which was Pavonis's dark twin. The picture was a simulation, rather than an enlargement of what lay ahead.
- excerpt from chapter Ten of Revelation Space
Known celestial bodies[]
- Delta Pavonis (main star)
- Hades (neutron star companion)
- Cerberus (minor planet-like or moon-like body orbiting Hades)
Apearances[]
- Revelation Space (2000)
- Redemption Ark (2002)
Notes[]
- Aside from the Revelation Space universe, Delta Pavonis and its possible system have also featured in other science fiction works.
- Delta Pavonis is the closest Sun-like yellow dwarf in the vicinity of the Solar System, including being a solitary star of the type, rather than part of a binary star system. Exoplanet research into Delta Pavonis has yielded no results into whether any planets orbit the star - not even gas giants have been detected to date, not to mention a fictional companion object like Hades. Despite this, members of the SETI Institute have identified the star as the best potential candidate for a planetary system that could include a life-bearing terrestrial planet similar to Earth. The fictional Resurgam seems to have been one such example of an Earth-like planet orbiting Delta Pavonis, albeit one where life was eventually extinguished in the deeper past.