Piscis Austrinus

Origin

Piscis Austrinus is a faint southern constellation but is visible low in the south during late summer and early fall months at mid-northern latitudes. The name is Latin for the southern fish. Piscis Austrinus was one of the 48 constellations cataloged by the second-century astronomer Ptolemy that was a direct takeover of an original Babylonian constellation. The “huge fish” or “southern fish” or simply “fish” with the bright star on his mouth can be traced back at least to the second millennium BCE..

Bright Stars

The brightest star in Piscis Austrinus is Fomalhaut (Alpha Piscis Austrini). Fomalhaut is a white main sequence star 25 light-years from Earth. After Fomalhaut, there are no other stars brighter than 4th magnitude in Piscis Austrinus. The second-brightest star is Epsilon Piscis Austrini, a blue-white star shining at magnitude 4.17 and lying 400 light-years from Earth. Beta Piscis Austrini is a white main sequence star shining at magnitude 4.29 and lying 143 light-years distant.

Photo of the constellation Piscis Austrinus produced by NOIRLab in collaboration with Eckhard Slawik, a German astrophotographer. The annotations are from a standardized set of 88 western IAU constellations and stick figures from Sky & Telescope. Please find here a non-annotated version of the image.

Credit: E. Slawik/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Zamani