Figures / Ocai
Ocai
“eye, o —”
oc “eye” + -ai “o —”
Ocai (“eye, o —”) is a 14-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 34° of the northern sky. Its brightest star is Sangagra, magnitude 0.97.
The story
The Renen hold that Ocai was a debtor who buried a key where no lock has yet been built, and was let go, which was the worse sentence. It is a figure of the winter, and its setting is the older marker for the end of that season. Sangagra, the amber eye, is the wound; the remaining 13 stars are counted from the ground up. Those who keep the old year count its stars aloud and always stop one short.
Where to look
- Right ascension
- 9.43 h
- Declination
- +18.03°
- Angular span
- 34.0°
- Stars in the figure
- 14
- Best season
- winter (northern hemisphere)
- Circumpolar
- nowhere — it rises and sets at every inhabited latitude
Its stars
| Letter | Name | Mag | Type | Distance | Temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiv | Sangagra“blood-field” | 0.97 | K5 I | 93 pc | 4,330 K |
| bhor | Exilpyreien“exile-ash-heap, belonging to” | 2.45 | K5 I | 162 pc | 4,309 K |
| ciel | Sovredriftune“sovereign-drift, place of” | 2.86 | F4 III | 35 pc | 6,870 K |
| dor | Risailmen“morning-dawn, the many” | 3.15 | F2 III | 79 pc | 7,150 K |
| enn | Vanesulor“wing-salt, without” | 3.32 | B7 I | 571 pc | 13,560 K |
| fael | Sylaeleth“wind-light, of the” | 3.76 | A1 V | 33 pc | 9,589 K |
| gyre | Phethune“flare, place of” | 3.80 | B8 V | 58 pc | 11,442 K |
| hesp | Aeraeskath“open-sky-ice, made of” | 3.90 | B8 V | 67 pc | 12,137 K |
| ir | Sangecorris“blood-crown, little” | 4.12 | K4 II | 290 pc | 4,589 K |
| joth | Agrabaelien“field-clay, belonging to” | 4.14 | K7 III | 73 pc | 4,029 K |
| kai | Phethemmath“flare-lantern, made of” | 4.15 | F6 V | 16 pc | 6,504 K |
| lune | KS 1582 | 4.24 | A7 V | 33 pc | 8,092 K |
| mor | KS 1600 | 4.27 | K7 III | 194 pc | 4,074 K |
| nix | KS 1642 | 4.31 | F9 III | 77 pc | 6,001 K |
How this was made
Ocai was not designed. It was grown outward from Sangagra, 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.