Figures / Frenherd
Frenherd
“friend-shepherd”
fren “friend” + herd “shepherd”
Frenherd (“friend-shepherd”) is a 8-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 17° of the northern sky. Its brightest star is Nunceveina, magnitude 1.21.
The story
The Kelen hold that Frenherd was a singer with no voice who unpicked the seam between one season and the next, and is kept there so the others remember the cost. North of 58° it never sets, which is taken as evidence that the sentence has not ended. Nunceveina, the amber eye, is the wound; the remaining 7 stars are counted against the turn. Those who keep the old year still leave a cup out when it rises.
Where to look
- Right ascension
- 8.77 h
- Declination
- +31.68°
- Angular span
- 16.9°
- Stars in the figure
- 8
- Best season
- winter (northern hemisphere)
- Circumpolar
- north of 58° latitude, where it never sets
Its stars
| Letter | Name | Mag | Type | Distance | Temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiv | Nunceveina“now-vein, she who is” | 1.21 | K4 III | 33 pc | 4,456 K |
| bhor | Drinefrenor“throat-friend, without” | 1.85 | K3 I | 319 pc | 4,701 K |
| ciel | Emmephetha“lantern-flare, she who is” | 2.23 | A4 I | 606 pc | 8,870 K |
| dor | Ashemornai“ash-tomorrow, o —” | 2.37 | K4 III | 36 pc | 4,607 K |
| enn | Kelloth“key-glow” | 3.23 | B7 V | 75 pc | 14,679 K |
| fael | Talossor“foot-bone, without” | 3.51 | K2 I | 264 pc | 4,831 K |
| gyre | KS 1534 | 4.17 | B6 IV | 183 pc | 16,594 K |
| hesp | KS 1573 | 4.23 | F1 III | 215 pc | 7,253 K |
How this was made
Frenherd was not designed. It was grown outward from Nunceveina, 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.