Figures / Smideskai
Smideskai
“forge-falling”
smid “forge” + skai “falling”
Smideskai (“forge-falling”) is a 7-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 11° of the far northern sky. Its brightest star is Ansavesa, magnitude 2.95.
The story
The Smiden hold that Smideskai was a thief who gave away a name and was answered by everything, and was set turning and has not been released. North of 14° it never sets, which is taken as evidence that the sentence has not ended. Ansavesa, the white nail, is the wound; the remaining 6 stars are counted from the ground up. Those who keep the old year settle debts on the night it first clears the roofline.
Where to look
- Right ascension
- 6.15 h
- Declination
- +75.70°
- Angular span
- 11.2°
- Stars in the figure
- 7
- Best season
- winter (northern hemisphere)
- Circumpolar
- north of 14° latitude, where it never sets
Its stars
| Letter | Name | Mag | Type | Distance | Temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aiv | Ansavesa“knot-burning, she who is” | 2.95 | A1 I | 265 pc | 9,716 K |
| bhor | Drinien“throat, belonging to” | 3.54 | K2 I | 1.07 kpc | 4,947 K |
| ciel | Faelilm“maker-dawn” | 3.95 | A9 III | 37 pc | 7,504 K |
| dor | Aurhalonar“gold-deep, one who” | 3.97 | B6 V | 176 pc | 16,873 K |
| enn | Oss“bone” | 3.97 | M3 II | 72 pc | 3,239 K |
| fael | KS 1525 | 4.16 | K6 II | 302 pc | 4,205 K |
| gyre | KS 1659 | 4.34 | B7 V | 100 pc | 13,533 K |
How this was made
Smideskai was not designed. It was grown outward from Ansavesa, 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.