Fornax - Definition and Overview

Fornax
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Abbreviation	For
Genitive	Fornacis
Symbology	the furnace
Right ascension	? h
Declination	?°
Area	398 sq. deg. Ranked 41st
Number of stars (magnitude < 3)	None
Brightest star	α For (App. magnitude 3.87)
Meteor showers	None
Bordering constellations	Cetus Sculptor Phoenix Eridanus
Visible at latitudes between +?° and −?° Best visible during the month of ?

Fornax (Latin for furnace) is a southern constellation which was first introduced by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille under the name Fornax Chemica (Latin for chemical furnace). The Fornax Dwarf galaxy lies in Fornax.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is located within the constellation.

At a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in Britain, a team from University of Queensland described 40 unknown "dwarf" galaxies in this constellation.

They also described Fornax as being "on Earth's doorstep".

Follow-up observations with the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope revealed that Ultra Compact Dwarfs are much smaller than previously known dwarf galaxies, about 120 light years across.

"Tens of millions of stars are squashed into what is a tiny volume by galaxy standards," the observatory said in a statement.

Mythology

Fornax, in Roman mythology, was the goddess of bread and baking, although this has nothing to do with the constellation (fornax is just the Roman word for furnace), as the constellation was created in 1763.

See Also

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