Figures / Athis
Athis
“father, little”
ath “father” + -is “little”
Athis (“father, little”) is a 12-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 31° of the far southern sky. Its brightest star is Herdesoonol, magnitude 2.09.
The story
The Exilen hold that Athis was a midwife who carried water uphill for forty years without spilling it, and is still counting, and the counting is what you see. It is a figure of the autumn, and its setting is the older marker for the end of that season. Herdesoonol, the amber eye, is the eye; the remaining 11 stars are counted against the turn. Those who keep the old year keep the last window unshuttered while it passes.
Where to look
- Right ascension
- 3.95 h
- Declination
- -45.04°
- Angular span
- 30.6°
- Stars in the figure
- 12
- Best season
- autumn (northern hemisphere)
- Circumpolar
- nowhere — it rises and sets at every inhabited latitude
Its stars
| Letter | Name | Mag | Type | Distance | Temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiv | Herdesoonol“shepherd-soon, great” | 2.09 | K5 III | 83 pc | 4,318 K |
| bhor | Emmesk“lantern-ice” | 2.22 | B6 V | 82 pc | 16,976 K |
| ciel | Baeleth“clay, of the” | 3.35 | M2 III | 157 pc | 3,349 K |
| dor | Fennemereol“feather-still-water, great” | 3.55 | A3 V | 35 pc | 9,247 K |
| enn | Sulsylys“salt-wind, the last” | 3.67 | A2 V | 40 pc | 9,363 K |
| fael | Veslothien“burning-glow, belonging to” | 4.05 | F3 II | 268 pc | 7,056 K |
| gyre | Ash“ash” | 4.06 | K2 II | 197 pc | 4,835 K |
| hesp | Fennekelys“feather-key, the last” | 4.08 | A4 V | 30 pc | 8,842 K |
| ir | Aeonar“age, one who” | 4.09 | K8 III | 270 pc | 3,846 K |
| joth | KS 1536 | 4.17 | B7 V | 85 pc | 14,351 K |
| kai | KS 1555 | 4.21 | M1 III | 134 pc | 3,611 K |
| lune | KS 1608 | 4.28 | K9 III | 157 pc | 3,727 K |
How this was made
Athis was not designed. It was grown outward from Herdesoonol, 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.