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From today's featured article Pictor (Latin for "painter") is a small faint constellation between the 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. (Full article...) Recently featured: Arthur W. Radford Halo Wars African river martin Did you know... Georgiana Simpson ... that after receiving her PhD in 1921, Georgiana Simpson (pictured), like other black women scholars, could only find a university position teaching home economics? ... that when Liverpool played in the Football League Cup Final today, they did so for a record 12th time? ... that Soup the Chemist has been called the "Godfather of Christian hip hop"? ... that the plot for the Veronica Mars episode "Postgame Mortem" was based around a scene in an elevator, and the crew "wrote backwards" from that scene? ... that Queen Elizabeth cake is named after Elizabeth II and is a popular cake in Canada? ... that Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto composed the original soundtrack for the 2015 film The Revenant during his recovery from throat cancer? ... that Lebanese IT expert and U.S. permanent resident Nizar Zakka, detained in Iran since September 18, 2015, has been accused of being an American spy? ... that anti-fascists, Islamists, and neo-Nazis rioted against a tennis match?

In the news Denny Hamlin Thirty-six people are killed in an explosion in a coal mine near Vorkuta, Russia. Tara Air Flight 193 crashes in Nepal, killing all twenty-three people on board. In motorsport, Denny Hamlin (pictured) wins the Daytona 500 by 0.01 seconds, the narrowest margin in the race's history. Cyclone Winston, the strongest tropical cyclone on record to strike Fiji, kills at least forty-two people. Yoweri Museveni claims a fifth term as President of Uganda, in an election international observers have criticised as flawed. Ongoing events: Zika virus outbreak European migrant crisis Recent deaths: Douglas Slocombe Eric Brown Umberto Eco On this day... February 28: Teachers' Day in the Arab world; Kalevala Day in Finland Olof Palme 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. 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. 1914 – In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, Greeks living in southern Albania proclaimed the Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus. 1986 – Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme (pictured) was assassinated by a lone gunman in Stockholm while walking home from a movie theatre with his wife Lisbet Palme. 2002 – During the 2002 Gujarat violence in India, mobs of Hindus attacked Muslims in Naroda Patiya and Chamanpura, resulting in 166 deaths. More anniversaries: February 27 February 28 February 29

Today's featured picture The 1648 ratification of the Peace of Münster, as painted the same year by Gerard ter Borch. With this treaty, which was reached after seven years of negotiations, Spain formally recognized the independence of the United Netherlands. The treaty contributed to the Peace of Westphalia, which ended both the Thirty Years' War and the Eighty Years' War. Painting: Gerard ter Borch Recently featured: Cylindrical equal-area projection Victor Hugo Mako shark jaw

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