Figures / Aelath
Aelath
“light, made of”
ael “light” + -ath “made of”
Aelath (“light, made of”) is a 5-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 13° of the northern sky. Its brightest star is Stadsovreth, magnitude 2.85.
The story
The Ainen hold that Aelath was a midwife who carried water uphill for forty years without spilling it, and is still counting, and the counting is what you see. North of 53° it never sets, which is taken as evidence that the sentence has not ended. Stadsovreth, the ordinary sun, is the wound; the remaining 4 stars are counted from the ground up. Those who keep the old year keep the last window unshuttered while it passes.
Where to look
- Right ascension
- 14.70 h
- Declination
- +37.35°
- Angular span
- 12.5°
- Stars in the figure
- 5
- Best season
- spring (northern hemisphere)
- Circumpolar
- north of 53° latitude, where it never sets
Its stars
| Letter | Name | Mag | Type | Distance | Temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiv | Stadsovreth“standing-sovereign, of the” | 2.85 | G0 II | 66 pc | 5,974 K |
| bhor | Halonzireth“deep-high, of the” | 3.00 | B4 I | 277 pc | 20,624 K |
| ciel | Aurys“gold, the last” | 3.31 | B8 I | 226 pc | 12,908 K |
| dor | Ocpyreol“eye-ash-heap, great” | 4.11 | K1 III | 69 pc | 4,989 K |
| enn | KS 1624 | 4.29 | G3 V | 10 pc | 5,758 K |
How this was made
Aelath was not designed. It was grown outward from Stadsovreth, the brightest star in this part of the sky that had not already been claimed by another figure, absorbing near neighbours until it ran out of them — which is, near enough, how the constellations of the real sky came about. Its name is Ilmenic, an invented agglutinative language: every name on this site decomposes into morphemes and can be translated.