Figures / Issephetheth
Issephetheth
“thread-flare, of the”
iss “thread” + pheth “flare” + -eth “of the”
Issephetheth (“thread-flare, of the”) is a 4-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 12° of the northern sky. Its brightest star is Vashephethath, magnitude 2.21.
The story
The Emmen hold that Issephetheth was a keeper of bees who carried water uphill for forty years without spilling it, and was let go, which was the worse sentence. North of 63° it never sets, which is taken as evidence that the sentence has not ended. Vashephethath, the cold lamp, is the knot; the remaining 3 stars are counted inward. Those who keep the old year settle debts on the night it first clears the roofline.
Where to look
- Right ascension
- 22.15 h
- Declination
- +27.01°
- Angular span
- 12.0°
- Stars in the figure
- 4
- Best season
- summer (northern hemisphere)
- Circumpolar
- north of 63° latitude, where it never sets
Its stars
| Letter | Name | Mag | Type | Distance | Temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiv | Vashephethath“wave-flare, made of” | 2.21 | B7 V | 49 pc | 15,049 K |
| bhor | Marol“hand, great” | 3.18 | K5 III | 179 pc | 4,411 K |
| ciel | Ocashor“eye-ash, without” | 3.63 | M2 I | 1.30 kpc | 3,376 K |
| dor | Haelar“breath, one who” | 4.04 | B5 I | 433 pc | 19,022 K |
See Vashephethath in the sky →
How this was made
Issephetheth was not designed. It was grown outward from Vashephethath, 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.