Furnace (constellation)

The Fourneau is a Constellation extremely not very luminous of the Southern hemisphere.

History

The Furnace is one of the 14 new constellations introduced by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1752 in order to fill last spaces of southern sky without denomination. It was originally named Fornax Chemica , the furnace of the Latin chemist in . Its name can also be close to Fornax, the Roman divinity of the bread and the furnaces.

Observation of stars

The Furnace is entirely located the outer loop Be-South-West which the river Éridan makes. The river itself is difficult to locate, and the Furnace more still.

Principal stars

α Fornacis

The luminary of the constellation of the Furnace, α Fornacis, with its 3,80 of Magnitude connects is only at the end fourth magnitude. It is about a star doubles made up of two stars of class F8 and G7 of appreciably of the same mass than the Sun, distant one of the other of 56 ua on average on a Orbite very eccentric and orbiting in 269 years.

Other stars

None of other stars of the constellation exceeds the fifth magnitude.

Celestial objects

The Furnace includes a portion of the sky which has few stars or close objects and, for this reason, it was selected to carry out the photography of the “Champ ultra deep” taken by the Space telescope Hubble in 1995.

One also finds in this constellation one of the dwarf galaxies closest to us, with a little more than 500.000 light-years, but it is not visible with the naked eye.

See too

List of stars of the Furnace

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