The Furnace
| Abbreviation: | For |
| Genitive: | Fornacis |
| Origin: | Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, 1756 |
| Fully Visible: | 90°S – 50°N |
French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille (1713–1762) travelled to South Africa in the mid-eighteenth century where he constructed an observatory and spent two years observing the southern skies. Not only did he catalogue nearly 10,000 southern stars, he also surveyed 42 'nebulous' objects and devised over a dozen new constellations. Originally named Le Fourneau, this faint southern hemisphere constellation was later Latinised to Fornax Chimiae and eventually shortened to just Fornax. This constellation is one of a number of 'modern' constellations named after scientific instruments.
The celebrated Hubble Ultra Deep Field image was taken within the confines of this constellation. The Fornax Cluster of galaxies is also located here, spilling over into the constellation of Eridanus.
Notable Features
| Visible Named Stars | ||
|---|---|---|
| α For | Dalim | Arab astronomers saw many ostriches in the sky and Dalim is one of them. At fourth-magnitude, it is the brightest star in the constellation. |
| Other Interesting Stars | ||
| CD−30 1019 | Diya | This eleventh-magnitude star is known to have at least one exoplanet. It is located in the sky very near the galaxy C67. |
| HD 20868 | Intan | This tenth-magnitude star is known to have at least one exoplanet and is found a little to the north of the three stars labelled χ For. |
| Deep Sky Objects | ||
| C67 | A telescope will reveal this barred spiral galaxy. This object is also a Seyfert galaxy, a very active galaxy with a bright, quasar-like nucleus. It is also known by its New General Catalogue number of 1097. | |
Copyright © 1995–2023 by L.M. Stockman and David Harper