Figures / Rena
Rena
“heart, she who is”
ren “heart” + -a “she who is”
Rena (“heart, she who is”) is a 10-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 26° of the northern sky. Its brightest star is Dunnuncol, magnitude 2.59.
The story
The Frenen hold that Rena was a tax-collector who carried water uphill for forty years without spilling it, and was hung up where the debt could be seen. North of 54° it never sets, which is taken as evidence that the sentence has not ended. Dunnuncol, the amber eye, is the heart; the remaining 9 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
- 17.29 h
- Declination
- +35.57°
- Angular span
- 25.7°
- Stars in the figure
- 10
- Best season
- spring (northern hemisphere)
- Circumpolar
- north of 54° latitude, where it never sets
Its stars
| Letter | Name | Mag | Type | Distance | Temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiv | Dunnuncol“hill-now, great” | 2.59 | K3 III | 88 pc | 4,735 K |
| bhor | Sovreth“sovereign, of the” | 2.90 | K4 III | 23 pc | 4,500 K |
| ciel | Meredrossol“still-water-tide, great” | 2.92 | B4 I | 254 pc | 20,470 K |
| dor | Sangaeonar“blood-age, one who” | 3.36 | K9 I | 815 pc | 3,757 K |
| enn | Nimben“cloud, the many” | 3.49 | B7 IV | 63 pc | 14,142 K |
| fael | Renvail“heart-veil” | 4.05 | M1 III | 78 pc | 3,564 K |
| gyre | KS 1615 | 4.28 | M2 III | 77 pc | 3,413 K |
| hesp | KS 1646 | 4.31 | G1 III | 95 pc | 5,954 K |
| ir | KS 1651 | 4.32 | K6 II | 116 pc | 4,207 K |
| joth | KS 1663 | 4.34 | F8 III | 79 pc | 6,202 K |
How this was made
Rena was not designed. It was grown outward from Dunnuncol, 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.