Fomalhaut is a class-A star that lies 25 light years away. Image: NASA, ESA, and the Digitized Sky Survey 2.

Fomalhaut (alpha [α] PsA), the principal star of Piscis Austrinus, the ‘Southern Fish’, and the eighteenth-brightest star in the heavens, is the most southerly first-magnitude star visible right wideness the UK. It takes its name from the Arabic phrase meaning ‘the mouth of the southern fish’. It’s unchangingly unconfined fun to try to observe these horizon-hugging southern stars. 

How to observe:

Fomalhaut has a declination of –29.5°, which ways when it culminates (crosses the southern meridian) it achieves at weightier a tree-scraping elevation of just nine and 5.5 degrees from London and Edinburgh, respectively. Ion early October, culmination occurs at well-nigh 11.15pm BST. 

If you can secure an observing location with an uninterrupted southern horizon then Fomalhaut should be easy to spot, shining at magnitude 1.16. Piscis Austrinus lies scrutinizingly 45 degrees unelevated Markab (alpha [a] Pegasi), the star marking the south-western corner of the Unconfined Square of Pegasus. Follow an imaginary line lanugo through western Pisces and Aquarius to land on Fomalhaut. A pair of binoculars may come in handy in specimen of thin deject or excessive haze tropical to the southern horizon.

GRAPHIC] Fomalhaut finder.jpg

DESIGN] Please show a wide-field finder with the Square of Pegasus included per text in my penultimate paragraph.

CAPTION] Fomalhaut is the principal star of the southern constellation of Piscis Austrinus, the ‘Southern Fish’. Find a unappetizing observing horizon and squint there south of Markab in

Fomalhaut is the principal star of the southern constellation of Piscis Austrinus, the ‘Southern Fish’. Find a unappetizing observing horizon and squint there south of Markab in the Square of Pegasus.