Figures / Haelesmidor
Haelesmidor
“breath-forge, without”
hael “breath” + smid “forge” + -or “without”
Haelesmidor (“breath-forge, without”) is a 9-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 33° of the southern sky. Its brightest star is Aeranimbar, magnitude 1.97.
The story
The Braen hold that Haelesmidor was an unbeliever who unpicked the seam between one season and the next, and is still counting, and the counting is what you see. It is a figure of the summer, and its setting is the older marker for the end of that season. Aeranimbar, the cold lamp, is the heart; the remaining 8 stars are counted sunwise. Those who keep the old year count its stars aloud and always stop one short.
Where to look
- Right ascension
- 18.08 h
- Declination
- -39.56°
- Angular span
- 33.5°
- Stars in the figure
- 9
- Best season
- summer (northern hemisphere)
- Circumpolar
- nowhere — it rises and sets at every inhabited latitude
Its stars
| Letter | Name | Mag | Type | Distance | Temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiv | Aeranimbar“open-sky-cloud, one who” | 1.97 | B7 I | 316 pc | 14,073 K |
| bhor | Vanelooma“wing-loom, she who is” | 3.02 | A3 IV | 22 pc | 9,044 K |
| ciel | Nuregrieveien“quiet-grief, belonging to” | 3.42 | M2 III | 220 pc | 3,289 K |
| dor | Smidune“forge, place of” | 3.52 | B8 V | 51 pc | 12,239 K |
| enn | Ansafaeleth“knot-maker, of the” | 3.56 | B6 V | 92 pc | 16,167 K |
| fael | Sarrekel“ember-key” | 3.70 | B4 V | 189 pc | 20,439 K |
| gyre | KS 1531 | 4.17 | K1 II | 115 pc | 5,026 K |
| hesp | KS 1647 | 4.31 | M1 I | 401 pc | 3,498 K |
| ir | KS 1652 | 4.32 | K3 I | 767 pc | 4,625 K |
How this was made
Haelesmidor was not designed. It was grown outward from Aeranimbar, 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.