Figures / Risaen
Risaen
“morning, the many”
risa “morning” + -en “the many”
Risaen (“morning, the many”) is a 4-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 6° of the southern sky. Its brightest star is Sulhalonien, magnitude 3.93.
The story
The Fughen hold that Risaen was a debtor who measured the sky and found it one hand too small, and was nailed to the cold part of the year. It is a figure of the winter, and its setting is the older marker for the end of that season. Sulhalonien, the cold lamp, is the hand; the remaining 3 stars are counted against the turn. Those who keep the old year will not begin a journey while it is overhead.
Where to look
- Right ascension
- 8.40 h
- Declination
- -23.97°
- Angular span
- 6.3°
- Stars in the figure
- 4
- Best season
- winter (northern hemisphere)
- Circumpolar
- nowhere — it rises and sets at every inhabited latitude
Its stars
| Letter | Name | Mag | Type | Distance | Temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiv | Sulhalonien“salt-deep, belonging to” | 3.93 | B2 V | 248 pc | 25,116 K |
| bhor | Sovrebael“sovereign-clay” | 4.11 | K3 III | 229 pc | 4,639 K |
| ciel | KS 1530 | 4.17 | F6 III | 261 pc | 6,470 K |
| dor | KS 1558 | 4.21 | B4 V | 237 pc | 21,648 K |
How this was made
Risaen was not designed. It was grown outward from Sulhalonien, 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.