Fornax
No
- Eridanus
- Whale
- Sculptor
- Phoenix
The Chemical oven, in today's technical language use Fornax ( from Latin ) is a constellation of the southern sky.
Description
Fornax is an inconspicuous constellation, which is composed of faint stars. Only a star reaches the third size class. The constellation is surrounded for the most part by extensive Eridanus.
Fornax is only complete from Southern Germany, Austria or Switzerland (where it is in the late fall low on the horizon) and southern latitudes to see.
In the constellation is the Fornax cluster of galaxies, which contains 58 galaxies. At a distance of about 60 million light- years he has been under the Virgo cluster of galaxies the second closest galaxy clusters.
In Fornax we find the Fornax dwarf galaxy. You, however, not part of the Fornax cluster of galaxies, but with only 450,000 light years distance, a member of the Local Group, which also includes our Milky Way belongs.
History
The constellation was introduced in 1756 under the name le Fourneau ( Fornax Chimiae in 1763 ) by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille. Johann Elert Bode took it as Apparatus Chemicus in his star atlas Uranographia.
Between 2003 and 2004, the Hubble Space Telescope was taken up in a relatively star -poor region in Fornax the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The images show about 9,500 galaxies, which have the remotest a redshift of about 7.
Celestial objects
Stars
β Fornacis is about 200 light years away. It is a yellowish shining star of spectral type G7.
Double stars
α Fornacis, the brightest star in Fornax, is a double star system 40 light years away. The two components belong to the spectral types F7 and G7 and can already be observed with a small telescope.
NGC objects
In Fornax is NGC 1360, with a diameter of 390 arcsec one of the largest planetary nebula. It can easily be seen already in the prism binoculars. To make the 11m bright central star visible, however, you need a medium-sized telescope.
The Fornax dwarf galaxy has a very low surface brightness and therefore was not discovered until 1938 by Harlow Shapley on photographic plates. Although it has twice the diameter of the full moon in the night sky, it can not be visually observed with the telescope. Only on long-exposure photographs it becomes visible.
14 members of the Fornax cluster of galaxies brighter than 11.5 m and therefore already clearly visible in amateur telescopes.