This page describes an image Fornax Constellation Map
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Diagram caption:
The constellation Fornax with its bright stars and surrounding constellations. Fornax is surrounded by (going clockwise from the top): Cetus, Sculptor, Phoenix and Eridanus.
Fornax is a southern constellation and thus the whole constellation is visible in the whole southern hemisphere at some point in the year. The whole constellation is also visible from equatorial and most temperate regions of the northern hemisphere. Fornax is best viewed in the northern hemisphere winter and southern hemisphere summer.
The spiral galaxy NGC 1097 lies in Fornax and is marked here with a red ellipse.
The y-axis of this diagram is in degrees of declination with north as up and the x-axis is in hours of right ascension with east to the left. The sizes of the stars marked here relate to the star's apparent magnitude, a measure of its apparent brightness. The larger dots represent brighter stars. The Greek letters mark the brightest stars in the constellation. These are ranked by brightness with the brightest star being labeled alpha, the second brightest beta, etc., although this ordering is not always followed exactly. The dotted boundary lines mark the IAU's boundaries of the constellations and the solid green lines mark one of the common forms used to represent the figures of the constellations. Neither the constellation boundaries, nor the lines joining the stars appear on the sky.
Diagram credit: Adapted by the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education from the original by the IAU and Sky & Telescope. Credit Link
Related glossary terms:
Apparent Magnitude
, Celestial Coordinates
, Constellation
, Declination
, Right Ascension (RA)
, Spiral Galaxy
Categories:
Naked Eye Astronomy
Diagram license: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
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