[2] Pavo was one of the twelve constellations established by Petrus Plancius from the observations of the southern sky by explorers Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman, who had sailed on the first Dutch trading expedition, known as the Eerste Schipvaart, to the East Indies.

[9] The peacock and the "Argus" nomenclature are also prominent in a different myth, in which Io, a beautiful princess of Argos, was lusted after by Zeus (Jupiter).

Saturnia [Hera] retrieved those eyes to set in place among the feathers of her bird [the peacock, Pavo] and filled his tail with starry jewels.

[14] The Wardaman people of the Northern Territory in Australia saw the stars of Pavo and the neighbouring constellation Ara as flying foxes.

[15] Pavo is bordered by Telescopium to the north, Apus and Ara to the west, Octans to the south, and Indus to the east and northeast.

[17] The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 10 segments.

A white giant of spectral class A7III,[23] it is an aging star that has used up the hydrogen fuel at its core and has expanded and cooled after moving off the main sequence.

[24] Lying a few degrees west of Beta is Delta Pavonis, a nearby Sun-like but more evolved star;[18] this is a yellow subgiant of spectral type G8IV and apparent magnitude 3.56 that is only 19.9 light years distant from Earth.

[25] East of Beta and at the constellation's eastern border with Indus is Gamma Pavonis, a fainter, solar-type star 30 light years from Earth with a magnitude of 4.22 and stellar class F9V.

Classed as a Gamma Cassiopeiae variable or shell star,[28] it is of spectral type B2II-IIIe and lies around 1430 light years distant from Earth.

[33] At apparent magnitude 3.6, Eta is a luminous orange giant of spectral type K2II some 350 light years distant from Earth.

[35] AR Pavonis is a faint but well-studied eclipsing binary composed of a red giant and smaller hotter star some 18000 light years from Earth.

[40][41][42] HD 172555 is a young white A-type main sequence star, two planets of which appear to have had a major collision in the past few thousand years.

[43] In the south of the constellation, Epsilon Pavonis is a 3.95-magnitude white main sequence star of spectral type A0Va located around 105 light years distant from Earth.

[45] The deep-sky objects in Pavo include NGC 6752, the fourth-brightest globular cluster in the sky, after Omega Centauri, 47 Tucanae and Messier 22.

[49] Lying three degrees to the south is NGC 6744,[18] a spiral galaxy around 30 million light years away from Earth that resembles the Milky Way, but is twice its diameter.

[54] The 14th-magnitude galaxy IC 4965 lies 1.7 degrees west of Alpha Pavonis, and is a central member of the Shapley Supercluster.