Figures / Orna
Orna
“shut, she who is”
orn “shut” + -a “she who is”
Orna (“shut, she who is”) is a 14-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 36° of the southern sky. Its brightest star is Ornys, magnitude 1.96.
The story
The Skaien hold that Orna was a debtor who fell asleep during an eclipse and woke in the wrong century, and was made bright so that lying would be harder. It is a figure of the spring, and its setting is the older marker for the end of that season. Ornys, the red ember, 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
- 12.79 h
- Declination
- -10.15°
- Angular span
- 35.7°
- Stars in the figure
- 14
- Best season
- spring (northern hemisphere)
- Circumpolar
- nowhere — it rises and sets at every inhabited latitude
Its stars
| Letter | Name | Mag | Type | Distance | Temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiv | Ornys“shut, the last” | 1.96 | M3 I | 239 pc | 3,123 K |
| bhor | Drinar“throat, one who” | 2.64 | K2 I | 568 pc | 4,931 K |
| ciel | Herdien“shepherd, belonging to” | 2.77 | K4 I | 356 pc | 4,507 K |
| dor | Aelestada“light-standing, she who is” | 3.44 | F6 III | 215 pc | 6,522 K |
| enn | Anaeth“mother, of the” | 3.66 | K7 III | 225 pc | 3,989 K |
| fael | Driftar“drift, one who” | 3.76 | F4 III | 85 pc | 6,810 K |
| gyre | Haltar“halting, one who” | 3.77 | F4 II | 210 pc | 6,898 K |
| hesp | Phetheth“flare, of the” | 3.86 | A4 V | 28 pc | 8,943 K |
| ir | Stada“standing, she who is” | 4.02 | G8 III | 98 pc | 5,309 K |
| joth | Nimbaelen“cloud-light, the many” | 4.02 | B8 V | 77 pc | 12,725 K |
| kai | Issor“thread, without” | 4.11 | B6 V | 181 pc | 16,697 K |
| lune | KS 1587 | 4.26 | B3 IV | 282 pc | 22,999 K |
| mor | KS 1626 | 4.29 | A7 IV | 28 pc | 8,061 K |
| nix | KS 1644 | 4.31 | A9 V | 26 pc | 7,552 K |
How this was made
Orna was not designed. It was grown outward from Ornys, 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.