The French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille first described the constellation in French as le Fourneau Chymique (the Chemical Furnace) with an alembic and receiver in his early catalogue,[2] before abbreviating it to le Fourneau on his planisphere in 1752,[3][4] after he had observed and catalogued almost 10,000 southern stars during a two-year stay at the Cape of Good Hope.

He devised fourteen new constellations in uncharted regions of the Southern Celestial Hemisphere not visible from Europe.

[6] The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 8 segments (illustrated in infobox).

[11] Originally designated 12 Eridani by John Flamsteed, Alpha Fornacis was named by Lacaille as the brightest star in the new constellation.

[13] Beta Fornacis is a yellow-hued giant star of spectral type G8IIIb of magnitude 4.5 that has cooled and swelled to 11 times the Sun's diameter,[14] 178 ± 2 light-years from Earth.

This is because of differences in abundances of metals in its atmosphere; it belongs to a class of star known as an Alpha2 Canum Venaticorum variable.

[18][19] Shining with an apparent magnitude of 5.89, Epsilon Fornacis is a binary star system located 104.4 ± 0.3 light-years distant from Earth.

The primary star is around 12 billion years old and has cooled and expanded to 2.53 times the diameter of the Sun, while having only 91% of its mass.

[22] Kappa Fornacis is a triple star system composed of a yellow giant and a pair of red dwarfs.

[25] Six star systems in Fornax have been found to have planets: Local Group NGC 1049 is a globular cluster 500,000 light-years from Earth.

[32] It is notable as a Seyfert galaxy with strong spectral emissions indicating ionized gases and a central supermassive black hole.

[35] Down are some famous objects in this cluster: NGC 1365 is another barred spiral galaxy located at a distance of 56 million light-years from Earth.

Its bar is a center of star formation and shows extensions of the spiral arms' dust lanes.

These dust lanes have caused astronomers to discern that it recently merged with a small spiral galaxy.

Because it has a high rate of type Ia supernovae, NGC 1316 has been used to determine the size of the universe.

With a diameter of 130 000 light-years, it is one of the largest galaxies in the Fornax cluster and slightly larger than Milky Way.

It is located at a distance of circa 53 million light years from Earth and has apparent dimensions of 3.89' x 1.349'.

[41] ` UDFj-39546284 is a candidate protogalaxy located in Fornax,[42][43][44][45] although recent analyses have suggested it is likely to be a lower redshift source.

[46][47] GRB 190114C was a notable gamma ray burst explosion from a galaxy 4.5 billion light years away near the Fornax constellation,[48][49][50] that was initially detected in January 2019.

[51][52] According to astronomers, "the brightest light ever seen from Earth [to date] ... [the] biggest explosion in the Universe since the Big Bang".

[53] In Chinese astronomy, the stars that correspond to Fornax are within the White Tiger of the West (西方白虎, Xī Fāng Bái Hǔ).