Fomalhaut

Fomalhaut is the brightest star in the constellation Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish) at magnitude 1.16, located about 25 light-years from Earth. It is a white main-sequence star of spectral type A3V, about 1.9 times the mass of the Sun and 16.6 times more luminous. Fomalhaut is famous for its prominent debris disk — a ring of dusty material about 133 AU from the star — which was one of the first to be directly imaged. It is part of a wide triple star system with two distant companions.

Fomalhaut is sometimes called 'the Loneliest Star' because it shines in a region of sky largely devoid of other bright stars, low in the southern sky as seen from northern latitudes during autumn evenings. Its isolated brilliance makes it easy to identify. From the Northern Hemisphere, look for it low in the south during October and November. It is best seen from September through November. From southern latitudes, it passes nearly overhead.

The name Fomalhaut comes from the Arabic 'Fam al-Hut' meaning 'mouth of the fish.' It was the last of the four Royal Stars of ancient Persia, marking the winter solstice around 2500 BC. In 2008, a direct image of what appeared to be a planet (Fomalhaut b) was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. However, later observations suggested the bright spot may actually have been an expanding cloud of debris from a collision between two planetesimals.