The Fornax Dwarf
was first visited by Union Explorers about 220 years ago. A small fleet of6 battle ships, 12 Science Corps Survey Vessels, 20 Tiny Tim Freighters and Several Tugs with a MegaMon Station in tow. Arrived after a long trip of 460,000 Light Years. The Expedition had three objectives: Survey the Fornax Cluster, Research and First Contact and finding the source of the Ancient Pulse Message. (Classified) The Expedition did not find any sentient life forms in the Cluster but a wealth of Garden Planets (The Fornax Dwarf Treasure) Dozens of beautiful Earth like planets were found with an abundance of life but nothing sentient. The towed base was set up and called Fornax Hub (To facilitate more research) but the news of the “Fornax Treasure” reached Union News in an otherwise dull News week and a small Rush of Colonists started out to go to Fornax. About 5 Million members of the Simple Movement and the remnants of the Peace Hawk Party (3 Million) left and settled several worlds in the Fornax Cluster. After about 10 Years most of them really missed Union amnesties and went to the Fornax Hub Station to apply for Union Membership. The Membership was granted but with Union Service limitations due to the distance and due to the fact that building a Bridge would take a long time. SII established Long range GalNet Connection and all Fornax Union Worlds are connected to GalNet. Union Mail, XCHange Services and Space Bus Services are limited to once a year when a Tiny Tim makes the long trip ( A fleet of Tiny Tims is constantly moving back and forth as the trip takes many month. After the “New Y’All Incident” efforts to connect the Fornax Cluster with a Bridge have been stepped up and currently only two Stations are missing in the Chain, reducing travel time to 8 Weeks ( partially with Space train) Space Bus Service is now established. The Fornax Cluster Bridge is called “The Fork” as it splits in midway connecting the Large Magellan Cloud and the Attikan Commonwealth. The Station at the Fork Split is called Crossroads Station.
The Fornax Dwarf Spheroidal is an elliptical dwarf galaxy in the constellation Fornax that was discovered in 1938 by Harlow Shapley. He discovered it while he was in South Africa on photographic plates taken by a 24 inch reflecting telescope at Boyden Observatory, shortly after he discovered the Sculptor Dwarf galaxy.
The galaxy is a satellite of the Milky Way and contains six globular clusters; the largest, NGC 1049, was discovered before the galaxy itself. The galaxy is also receding from the Milky Way at 53 km/s. It mostly contains population II stars.
Contents[][hide] *1 Globular clusters |
[edit] Globular clusters[]
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, in 1999, Buonanno et al. derived a color-magnitude diagram for Fornax 4, a globular cluster within this galaxy. Unlike the globular clusters Fornax 1, 2, 3, and 5, which have horizontal branches across a wide range of colors and include RR Lyrae variables, Fornax 4 is found to have only red in its horizontal branch. Fornax 4 is also ~3 Gyr younger than the other globular clusters. Buonanno et al. note that the color-magnitude diagram of Fornax 4 has a strong similarity to "young" galactic globular Ruprecht 106. This leads to two open questions: Why do dwarf spheroidals allow the formation of globular clusters like Fornax 4 and Terzan 7 (of Sagittarius dwarf) long after globular clusters ceased to form in the main body of the Galactic halo? Is it possible that "young" globular clusters of the outer halo like Ruprecht 106 were originally formed in now defunct dwarf spheroidals?[5]