Fomalhaut: TheStar that could have been a Planet

And why not?

Fomalhaut is a star in the Southern Hemisphere. It resides in the constellation Piscis Austrinus at 03°52′ Pisces and is often called the “loneliest star” because it has no other bright star nearby.  It travels about three degrees and thirty minutes each year.

The star is estimated to around 440 million years old. By comparison, Earth’s sun is about 4.5 billion years old.  While Fomalhaut loses in age, it wins in siz with a ring about 20 billion kilometers (12,427,423,845 miles) from its central star and about 2 billion (12 billion miles) kilometers wide. This makes Fomalhaut about twice the mass of our sun.

Comparing Fomalhaut to Jupiter’s ring system, the latter is 122,000 kilometers (76,000 miles) across which is tiny to Fomalhaut solo ring.So based on how big Fomalhaut is why isn’t it a planet? Hubble, where this picture originated, on its journey that Fomalhaut is caked with ice and asteroid debries. That is cause Fomalhaut to dim and slowly fade away — typical of fixed stars.

 

 

The featured image is typically what Fomalhaut looks like, the “icy” Fomalhaut is a composite picture from optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope; the dark region is a coronagraphic mask, which filtered out the otherwise overwhelming light of the central star.¹

The link to Uranus

Sir William Herschel thought Fomalhaut was a comet, and was tracking its activity. Later, and he and sister, Caroline, discovered what they were tracking was the planet Uranus.

Historically Fomalhaut was the object of sunrise worship in the temple of Demeter at Eleusis (now Elefsina Greece) in 500 B.C. Its worshippers called it the “great Sea” in the Sky. Later the Arabians called it part of th four “tents ” or “home” of the galaxy part of the four royal stars of Persia. The other three are Regulus, Antares, and Aldebaran.

Astrologically

According to Ptolemy, Fomalhaut has the nature of Venus and Mercury and is fortunate and powerful.  He gives it an orb of 2°30′, but now days, fixed stars typically only get a one-degree orb and are only used in a horoscope with just the conjunction aspect.  Jerome Cardan, the Italian Renaissance astrologer, stated location 12 Gemini was paired with other lesser stars in the area and that gives an immortal name.  

Fomalhaut rules the heel of the right foot in the human body or the Achilles. Possibly that is why one gets plantar fascitis there — hard and frozen it takes lots of exercise (heat) to make it supple again

Footnotes:

The Picture of Icy Fomalhaut is credited to ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), M. MacGregor; NASA/ESA Hubble, P. Kalas; B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF) via the Night Sky Telescope Magazine.

This essay was reviewed and refreshed on 19 August 2026.