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Fornax
Fornax () is a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere, partly ringed by the celestial river Eridanus. Its name is Latin for furnace. It was named by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1756. Fornax is one of the 88 modern constellations. The three brightest stars—Alpha, Beta and Nu Fornacis—form a flattened triangle facing south. With an apparent magnitude of 3.91, Alpha Fornacis is the brightest star in Fornax. Six star systems have been found to have exoplanets. The Fornax Dwarf galaxy is a small faint satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. NGC 1316 is a relatively close radio galaxy. It is the 41st largest constellation in the night-sky, occupying an area of 398 square degrees. It is located in the first quadrant of the southern hemisphere (SQ1) and can be seen at latitudes between +50° and -90° during the month of December. History The French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille first described the constellation in French as ''le Fourneau Chy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fornax Dwarf
The Fornax Dwarf Spheroidal (formerly known as the Fornax System) is an elliptical dwarf galaxy in the constellation Fornax that was discovered in 1938 by Harlow Shapley. He discovered it while he was in South Africa on photographic plates taken by the 24 inch (61 cm) Bruce refractor at Boyden Observatory, shortly after he discovered the Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy. The galaxy is a satellite of the Milky Way and contains six globular clusters, an unusually high number for its size; the largest, NGC 1049, was discovered before the galaxy itself. The galaxy is also receding from the Milky Way at 53 km/s. It mostly contains population II stars, but also has populations of young and intermediate age. Globular clusters Using the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists derived a color-magnitude diagram for Fornax 4, a globular cluster within this galaxy. Unlike the globular clusters Fornax 1, 2, 3, and 5, which have horizontal branches across a wide range of colors an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NGC 1316
NGC 1316 (also known as ''Fornax A'') is a lenticular galaxy about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Fornax. It is a radio galaxy and at 1400 MHz is the fourth-brightest radio source in the sky. Structure and formation In the late 1970s, François Schweizer studied NGC 1316 extensively and found that the galaxy appeared to look like a small elliptical galaxy with some unusual dust lanes embedded within a much larger envelope of stars. The outer envelope contained many ripples, loops, and arcs. He also identified the presence of a compact disk of gas near the center that appeared inclined relative to the stars and that appeared to rotate faster than the stars (the mass-to-light ratio run in the center of NGC 1316 resembles that of many other giant ellipticals). Based on these results, Schweizer considered that NGC 1316 was built up through the merger of several smaller galaxies. Such merger events may have fueled the central supermassive black hole, that has a mass ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
LP 944-20
LP 944-20 is a dim brown dwarf of spectral class M9 located about 21 light-years from the Solar System in the constellation of Fornax. With a visual apparent magnitude of 18.69, it has one of the dimmest visual magnitudes listed on the RECONS page. Physical characteristics Due to short rotational period, this young brown dwarf is displaying strong and frequent X-ray flares, and possessing a strong magnetic field reaching 135 G at the photosphere level. On 15 December 1999 an X-ray flare was detected. On 27 July 2000, radio emission (in flare and quiescence) was detected from this brown dwarf by a team of students at the Very Large Array. Observations published in 2007 showed that the atmosphere of LP 944-20 contains much lithium and that it has dusty cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
