The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted the brighter stars and gave their Bayer designations in 1756.

Next is Beta Phoenicis, actually a binary system composed of two yellow giants with a combined apparent magnitude of 3.3.

Nu Phoenicis has a dust disk, while the constellation has ten star systems with known planets and the recently discovered galaxy clusters El Gordo and the Phoenix Cluster—located 7.2 and 5.7 billion light years away respectively, two of the largest objects in the visible universe.

Phoenix was the largest of the 12 constellations established by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman.

[5] Celestial historian Richard Allen noted that unlike the other constellations introduced by Plancius and La Caille, Phoenix has actual precedent in ancient astronomy, as the Arabs saw this formation as representing young ostriches, Al Ri'āl, or as a griffin or eagle.

[6] In addition, the same group of stars was sometimes imagined by the Arabs as a boat, Al Zaurak, on the nearby river Eridanus.

[10] The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 10 segments.

[11] A curved line of stars comprising Alpha, Kappa, Mu, Beta, Nu and Gamma Phoenicis was seen as a boat by the ancient Arabs.

It is an orange giant of apparent visual magnitude 2.37 and spectral type K0.5IIIb,[13] 77 light years distant from Earth and orbited by a secondary object about which little is known.

[14] Lying close by Ankaa is Kappa Phoenicis, a main sequence star of spectral type A5IVn and apparent magnitude 3.90.

[16] Zeta Phoenicis or Wurren[17] is an Algol-type eclipsing binary, with an apparent magnitude fluctuating between 3.9 and 4.4 with a period of around 1.7 days (40 hours); its dimming results from the component two blue-white B-type stars, which orbit and block out each other from Earth.

[19] In 1976, researchers Clausen, Gyldenkerne, and Grønbech calculated that a nearby 8th magnitude star is a fourth member of the system.

Its long mutual eclipses and combination of spectroscopic and astrometric data allows precise measurement of the masses and radii of the stars[21] which is viewed as a potential cross-check on stellar properties and distances independent on Ceiphid Variables and such techniques.

[23] Psi Phoenicis is another red giant, this time of spectral type M4III,[24] and has an apparent magnitude that ranges between 4.3 and 4.5 over a period of around 30 days.

[27] Located 6.5 degrees west of Ankaa is SX Phoenicis, a variable star which ranges from magnitude 7.1 to 7.5 over a period of a mere 79 minutes.

[29] Rho and BD Phoenicis are Delta Scuti variables—short period (six hours at most) pulsating stars that have been used as standard candles and as subjects to study astroseismology.

[44] WASP-29 is an orange dwarf of spectral type K4V and visual magnitude 11.3, which has a planetary companion of similar size and mass to Saturn.

[46] Initially hypothesised before they were belatedly discovered,[47] brown dwarfs are objects more massive than planets, but which are of insufficient mass for hydrogen fusion characteristic of stars to occur.

[49] With a visual magnitude of 15.17,[50] it is around 10,000 times dimmer than the faintest stars visible to the naked eye and is 36,000 light years distant.

[56] Located around 7.2 billion light years away, it is composed of two subclusters in the process of colliding, resulting in the spewing out of hot gas, seen in X-rays and infrared images.