Figures / Smidebraea
Smidebraea
“forge-bridge, she who is”
smid “forge” + brae “bridge” + -a “she who is”
Smidebraea (“forge-bridge, she who is”) is a 10-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 27° of the northern sky. Its brightest star is Carven, magnitude 0.83.
The story
The Veinen hold that Smidebraea was a child who would not be named who kept a light burning for a ship that had already come home, and was made bright so that lying would be harder. It is a figure of the autumn, and its setting is the older marker for the end of that season. Carven, the cold lamp, is the lamp; the remaining 9 stars are counted sunwise. Those who keep the old year still leave a cup out when it rises.
Where to look
- Right ascension
- 4.85 h
- Declination
- +17.57°
- Angular span
- 26.6°
- Stars in the figure
- 10
- Best season
- autumn (northern hemisphere)
- Circumpolar
- nowhere — it rises and sets at every inhabited latitude
Its stars
| Letter | Name | Mag | Type | Distance | Temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiv | Carven“cut, the many” | 0.83 | B2 V | 70 pc | 25,234 K |
| bhor | Stadvesien“standing-burning, belonging to” | 1.95 | G7 V | 2 pc | 5,357 K |
| ciel | Dunien“hill, belonging to” | 3.14 | M3 III | 23 pc | 3,272 K |
| dor | Ashesibbar“ash-sister, one who” | 3.46 | K8 I | 489 pc | 3,895 K |
| enn | Kelaera“key-open-sky” | 4.00 | B6 V | 148 pc | 16,010 K |
| fael | Cyncarvar“white-cut, one who” | 4.12 | A6 I | 468 pc | 8,252 K |
| gyre | Vane“wing” | 4.12 | A9 III | 225 pc | 7,604 K |
| hesp | KS 1553 | 4.21 | A9 III | 178 pc | 7,542 K |
| ir | KS 1588 | 4.26 | A8 V | 26 pc | 7,892 K |
| joth | KS 1613 | 4.28 | B6 V | 151 pc | 16,225 K |
How this was made
Smidebraea was not designed. It was grown outward from Carven, 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.