William Tyler Olcott

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”