Figures / Jossien
Jossien
“luck, belonging to”
joss “luck” + -ien “belonging to”
Jossien (“luck, belonging to”) is a 14-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 32° of the southern sky. Its brightest star is Sangashien, magnitude 2.79.
The story
The Ainen hold that Jossien was a singer with no voice who sold the same shadow to eleven buyers, 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. Sangashien, the amber eye, is the heart; the remaining 13 stars are counted from the ground up. Those who keep the old year keep the last window unshuttered while it passes.
Where to look
- Right ascension
- 23.97 h
- Declination
- -13.76°
- Angular span
- 32.4°
- Stars in the figure
- 14
- Best season
- summer (northern hemisphere)
- Circumpolar
- nowhere — it rises and sets at every inhabited latitude
Its stars
| Letter | Name | Mag | Type | Distance | Temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiv | Sangashien“blood-ash, belonging to” | 2.79 | K5 I | 246 pc | 4,303 K |
| bhor | Dunkorra“hill-root, she who is” | 2.79 | K6 III | 50 pc | 4,243 K |
| ciel | Ansaien“knot, belonging to” | 2.93 | B7 V | 60 pc | 14,157 K |
| dor | Vesien“burning, belonging to” | 2.93 | B6 I | 428 pc | 16,974 K |
| enn | Cynnimba“white-cloud, she who is” | 2.98 | B4 I | 991 pc | 20,022 K |
| fael | Wendesibbeth“traveller-sister, of the” | 3.31 | K8 III | 98 pc | 3,870 K |
| gyre | Ansaeth“knot, of the” | 3.49 | A8 III | 153 pc | 7,744 K |
| hesp | Veshael“burning-breath” | 3.50 | B9 V | 44 pc | 10,728 K |
| ir | Climbeth“climbing, of the” | 3.61 | F1 III | 27 pc | 7,286 K |
| joth | Neyrtalor“never-foot, without” | 3.80 | K1 I | 599 pc | 4,956 K |
| kai | Ossoc“bone-eye” | 3.91 | K8 III | 151 pc | 3,912 K |
| lune | Aerais“open-sky, little” | 4.00 | A8 III | 38 pc | 7,666 K |
| mor | Nimbehaelien“cloud-breath, belonging to” | 4.14 | A1 V | 52 pc | 9,817 K |
| nix | KS 1666 | 4.34 | K4 III | 308 pc | 4,577 K |
How this was made
Jossien was not designed. It was grown outward from Sangashien, 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.