It is a blue-white hued main sequence star 144 light-years from Earth, whose traditional name means "the river's end".

Beta Eridani, traditionally called Cursa, is a blue-white star of magnitude 2.8, 89 light-years from Earth.

Theta Eridani, called Acamar, is a binary star with blue-white components, distinguishable in small amateur telescopes and 161 light-years from Earth.

[1] A portion of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex can be found in the far northeastern section of Eridanus.

IC 2118 is a faint reflection nebula believed to be an ancient supernova remnant or gas cloud illuminated by nearby supergiant star Rigel in Orion.

NGC 1300 is a face-on barred spiral galaxy located 61 (plus or minus 8) million light-years away.

Eridu was an ancient city in the extreme south of Babylonia; situated in the marshy regions it was held sacred to the god Enki-Ea who ruled the cosmic domain of the Abyss - a mythical conception of the fresh-water reservoir below the Earth's surface.

[11] Eridanus is connected to the myth of Phaethon, who took over the reins of his father Helios' sky chariot (i.e., the Sun),[1] but didn't have the strength to control it and so veered wildly in different directions, scorching both Earth and heaven.

Since Eridanos was also a Greek name for the Po (Latin Padus), in which the burning body of Phaethon is said by Ovid to have extinguished, the mythic geography of the celestial and earthly Eridanus is complex.

[1] The stars that correspond to Eridanus are also depicted as a river in Indian astronomy starting close to the head of Orion just below Auriga.

Specifically, it is depicted as the Ganges on the head of Dakshinamoorthy or Nataraja, a Hindu incarnation of Shiva.

In Chinese astronomy, the northern part is located within the White Tiger of the West (西方白虎, Xī Fāng Bái Hǔ).