Star profile
Chi 2 Fornax
What is Chi 2 Fornax
Chi-2 Fornacis is an old orange K2 giant of the old galactic disk, twenty-three times the Sun's radius and nearly two hundred times its luminosity. She lives in Fornax, the Chemical Furnace, another constellation Lacaille invented in honour of the laboratory instrument. At 455 light-years she shines discreetly, almost at the edge of naked-eye visibility, like an ember forgotten in the embers of a furnace long gone out.
Where it is and when to see it
Chi 2 Fornax lies in the southern celestial hemisphere. It is visible to the naked eye under a dark sky. Its best month of the year is October: the Sun sits at the opposite point of the sky and the star culminates around midnight. How high it climbs above the horizon depends on the latitude you watch from.
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The signature wall
Stelvia's sky works like a signature wall: anyone can leave their name and a message on a real star, and that signature goes up on the map for everyone to read. Signing is free.
A signature without a lock can be replaced by someone else's. The lock makes the signature permanent and lets you choose a symbolic name for the star, always shown next to the star's catalogue identifier. How the lock works
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A public signature from a real person. The chosen name is a symbolic denomination within Stelvia, with no official standing or IAU recognition: the sky is not for sale and belongs to no one.
Astronomical data for Chi 2 Fornax
- Constellation
- Fornax
- Apparent magnitude
- 5.71
- Distance
- 455.0 light years
- Coordinates (J2000)
- RA 51.889° · Dec -35.681°
- Catalogue
- HIP 16112 · HD 21574
A symbolic commemorative gift: neither the signature nor the chosen name implies ownership of the star or recognition by the IAU.
Other stars in Fornax
Fornax has 26 stars in Stelvia's catalogue. Here are a few of them.
- DalimAlpha Fornax3.80
- Beta Fornax4.45
- Nu Fornax4.68
- Rho Fornax5.52
- HIP 154795.63
- Zeta Fornax5.69
- Iota 1 Fornax5.74
- Lambda 2 Fornax5.78