Figures / Herdebraeath
Herdebraeath
“shepherd-brow, made of”
herd “shepherd” + brae “brow” + -ath “made of”
Herdebraeath (“shepherd-brow, made of”) is a 11-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 25° of the southern sky. Its brightest star is Agraeth, magnitude 1.96.
The story
The Orphanen hold that Herdebraeath was a shepherd who counted every stone in the river and forgot her own name doing it, and was let go, which was the worse sentence. It is a figure of the summer, and its setting is the older marker for the end of that season. Agraeth, the amber eye, is the hand; the remaining 10 stars are counted sunwise. Those who keep the old year settle debts on the night it first clears the roofline.
Where to look
- Right ascension
- 18.19 h
- Declination
- -10.13°
- Angular span
- 24.7°
- Stars in the figure
- 11
- Best season
- summer (northern hemisphere)
- Circumpolar
- nowhere — it rises and sets at every inhabited latitude
Its stars
| Letter | Name | Mag | Type | Distance | Temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiv | Agraeth“field, of the” | 1.96 | K4 I | 372 pc | 4,545 K |
| bhor | Kelsylen“key-wind, the many” | 2.76 | A5 I | 298 pc | 8,548 K |
| ciel | Looma“loom, she who is” | 3.30 | A8 V | 19 pc | 7,895 K |
| dor | Marys“hand, the last” | 3.32 | M1 III | 40 pc | 3,478 K |
| enn | Cynzir“white-high” | 3.58 | A1 V | 35 pc | 9,651 K |
| fael | Kelaelen“key-light, the many” | 3.59 | F8 III | 87 pc | 6,213 K |
| gyre | Hestaeonys“yesterday-age, the last” | 3.76 | K8 III | 120 pc | 3,802 K |
| hesp | Orphanloomar“orphan-loom, one who” | 3.83 | F6 III | 36 pc | 6,454 K |
| ir | Kelvasheth“key-wave, of the” | 3.86 | B8 I | 402 pc | 12,542 K |
| joth | Tessorphaneth“tile-orphan, of the” | 3.99 | F6 III | 68 pc | 6,446 K |
| kai | KS 1594 | 4.26 | B6 V | 144 pc | 16,466 K |
How this was made
Herdebraeath was not designed. It was grown outward from Agraeth, 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.