Fornax is a southern constellation. It has been described as being being "on Earth's doorstep", because its main star, Alpha Fornacis, is only about 46 light-years away.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is located within Fornax. At a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in Britain, a team from University of Queensland described 40 unknown "dwarf" galaxies in this constellation. Follow-up observations with the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope revealed that Ultra Compact Dwarfs are much smaller than previously known dwarf galaxies, about 120 light-years across. The Fornax Cluster, a small cluster of galaxies lies primarily in the constellation Fornax.

In Star Trek, the Fornax Disaster is said to have taken place place sometime between 2367 and 2383. In an illusion created by Barash - a lonely young alien who trapped William T. Riker in a complex holographic fantasy - a star going nova threatened a colony there, but the USS Enterprise-D, under Riker's command, arrived in time to save all the colonists. Jean-Luc Riker, Will's imaginary son, claimed to have been asked about this incident in school by his teacher, Mr. Greenburg, but he did not know the exact stardate. (TNG: "Future Imperfect")