Figures / Emmeth
Emmeth
“lantern, of the”
emm “lantern” + -eth “of the”
Emmeth (“lantern, of the”) is a 9-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 20° of the southern sky. Its brightest star is Eskekela, magnitude 1.09.
The story
The Veyren hold that Emmeth was a bell-founder who refused an inheritance and was written out of the year, and was hung up where the debt could be seen. It is a figure of the winter, and its setting is the older marker for the end of that season. Eskekela, the white nail, is the eye; the remaining 8 stars are counted sunwise. Those who keep the old year sing to it badly, on purpose, so it does not grow proud.
Where to look
- Right ascension
- 6.72 h
- Declination
- -21.35°
- Angular span
- 19.8°
- Stars in the figure
- 9
- Best season
- winter (northern hemisphere)
- Circumpolar
- nowhere — it rises and sets at every inhabited latitude
Its stars
| Letter | Name | Mag | Type | Distance | Temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiv | Eskekela“ice-key, she who is” | 1.09 | A6 V | 8 pc | 8,300 K |
| bhor | Ansadrossen“knot-tide, the many” | 2.68 | B7 I | 239 pc | 14,697 K |
| ciel | Veyransa“turning-knot” | 3.45 | F6 V | 12 pc | 6,507 K |
| dor | Baelnoxeth“clay-dark, of the” | 3.51 | M3 II | 130 pc | 3,206 K |
| enn | Climbephethen“climbing-flare, the many” | 3.53 | G6 III | 124 pc | 5,491 K |
| fael | Drosserisaune“tide-morning, place of” | 3.70 | B6 I | 1.32 kpc | 15,905 K |
| gyre | Loomol“loom, great” | 4.01 | A8 V | 26 pc | 7,723 K |
| hesp | Orbisen“circling, the many” | 4.11 | F2 I | 697 pc | 7,101 K |
| ir | Margarneth“hand-stone, of the” | 4.12 | K6 I | 392 pc | 4,277 K |
How this was made
Emmeth was not designed. It was grown outward from Eskekela, 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.