The Constellation Fornax
Fornax is a faint constellation in the southern sky, visible in the evening sky in the months around October.
Its brightest stars are of fourth magnitude, but it is best known for some of its extremely faint deep sky objects.
Lying well away from the plane of the Milky Way, Fornax offers an extremely good window on the distant Universe. Even compared to other similarly dark sky areas, Fornax offers unusually large areas of sky where there is minimal obscuration from nearby material.
For this reason, it was chosen for the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Other deep sky objects of interest include the Fornax Dwarf galaxy – a nearby companion to the Milky Way – and the Fornax Cluster of galaxies. Both, however, require a large telescope and exceptionally dark skies to be seen.
The name ‘Fornax’ was given to this sky area by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1756. It is Latin for ‘furnace’.
Hover the pointer over the name of an object to highlight its position on the starchart to the right, or click to see more information.
| Stars | Open Clusters | Globular Clusters | Galaxies |
| α-For (mag 3.9) | NGC 1049 (mag 13.6) | NGC 1316 (mag 8.2) | |
| β-For (mag 4.5) | NGC 1097 (mag 9.2) | ||
| ν-For (mag 4.7) | NGC 1399 (mag 9.4) | ||
| ω-For (mag 5.0) | NGC 1398 (mag 9.6) | ||
| δ-For (mag 5.0) | NGC 1365 (mag 10.1) | ||
| φ-For (mag 5.1) | NGC 1350 (mag 10.3) | ||
| κ-For (mag 5.2) | NGC 1340 (mag 10.4) | ||
| μ-For (mag 5.3) | NGC 1302 (mag 10.6) | ||
| π-For (mag 5.4) | NGC 1367 (mag 10.7) | ||
| γ²-For (mag 5.4) | NGC 1425 (mag 10.7) | ||
| η³-For (mag 5.5) | NGC 1387 (mag 10.8) | ||
| ρ-For (mag 5.5) | NGC 1201 (mag 10.8) | ||
| HIP 15479 (mag 5.6) | NGC 1317 (mag 10.9) | ||
| ζ-For (mag 5.7) | NGC 1379 (mag 11.0) | ||
| χ²-For (mag 5.7) | NGC 1385 (mag 11.0) | ||
| ι¹-For (mag 5.7) | NGC 1374 (mag 11.1) | ||
| λ²-For (mag 5.8) | NGC 1255 (mag 11.2) | ||
| ι²-For (mag 5.8) | NGC 1079 (mag 11.4) | ||
| ε-For (mag 5.9) | NGC 1351 (mag 11.5) | ||
| λ¹-For (mag 5.9) | NGC 1381 (mag 11.5) | ||
| σ-For (mag 5.9) | NGC 1339 (mag 11.8) | ||
| HIP 15357 (mag 5.9) | NGC 1406 (mag 11.8) | ||
| η²-For (mag 5.9) | NGC 897 (mag 11.8) | ||
| ψ-For (mag 5.9) | IC 1993 (mag 11.9) | ||
| HIP 16029 (mag 5.9) | NGC 1366 (mag 11.9) | ||
| HIP 12608 (mag 6.0) | NGC 922 (mag 12.0) | ||
| τ-For (mag 6.0) | NGC 1310 (mag 12.1) | ||
| HIP 8820 (mag 6.1) | NGC 1292 (mag 12.1) | ||
| HIP 11524 (mag 6.1) | NGC 1288 (mag 12.2) | ||
| HIP 13907 (mag 6.1) | NGC 1336 (mag 12.3) |
