Figures / Haelfughis
Haelfughis
“breath-fleeing, little”
hael “breath” + fugh “fleeing” + -is “little”
Haelfughis (“breath-fleeing, little”) is a 4-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 16° of the northern sky. Its brightest star is Carvilmar, magnitude 2.97.
The story
The Sarren hold that Haelfughis was a midwife who kept a light burning for a ship that had already come home, and was made bright so that lying would be harder. North of 46° it never sets, which is taken as evidence that the sentence has not ended. Carvilmar, the white nail, is the lamp; the remaining 3 stars are counted inward. Those who keep the old year will not begin a journey while it is overhead.
Where to look
- Right ascension
- 11.86 h
- Declination
- +43.71°
- Angular span
- 16.4°
- Stars in the figure
- 4
- Best season
- winter (northern hemisphere)
- Circumpolar
- north of 46° latitude, where it never sets
Its stars
| Letter | Name | Mag | Type | Distance | Temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiv | Carvilmar“cut-dawn, one who” | 2.97 | A2 V | 27 pc | 9,465 K |
| bhor | Braeketha“brow-soot, she who is” | 2.99 | M3 I | 279 pc | 3,118 K |
| ciel | KS 1526 | 4.16 | A7 V | 26 pc | 8,097 K |
| dor | KS 1661 | 4.34 | F5 III | 269 pc | 6,624 K |
How this was made
Haelfughis was not designed. It was grown outward from Carvilmar, 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.