Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/80

40 above the horizon and adorns the southern skies in the early evening during the autumn months. Fomalhaut is made the more conspicuous because it is the brightest star in this region of the sky. It is the farthest south of all the first magnitude stars we see, and ranks thirteenth among the brilliant stars in our hemisphere.

Mrs. Martin thus refers to this great sun: "On early acquaintance the loneliness of the star, added to the sombre signs of approaching autumn, sometimes gives one a touch of melancholy, but its aspect when more familiar soon comes to suggest only sweetness and serenity, and a lover of Fomalhaut feels that a sustaining light has gone when, during the last of December, this beautiful star sinks gently down in the south-west and disappears from the evening sky not to return for more than seven months."

Fomalhaut is always associated in the mind of the star lover with Capella, the brilliant in the constellation Auriga, which rises far from it over the north-eastern horizon. As these two stars rise almost simultaneously, one naturally turns from a glimpse of one to the bright beams of the other.

The name Fomalhaut, pronounced Fō’-mal-ō, is from the Arabic, meaning "the Fish's Mouth." Aratos mentions it as "One large and bright by both the Pourer's feet." Among the early Arabs, Fomalhaut was known as "the First Frog."

Flammarion tells us that Fomalhaut was known as "Hastorang" in Persia 3000, when near the winter solstice. It was also called "the magnificent Royal Star," and was one of the four Royal stars of astrology, ruling over the four cardinal points of the heavens, the other stars being Regulus, Antares, and Aldebaran. These four stars were also regarded as the four guardians of Heaven, sentinels watching over the other stars. About 500 Fomalhaut was the object of sunrise