Vanune

“wing, place of”

vane “wing” + -une “place of”

Vanune (“wing, place of”) is a 9-star constellation of The Other Sky, spanning 27° of the southern sky. Its brightest star is Sylissien, magnitude 1.22.

The story

The Ainen hold that Vanune was a cartographer who taught the tide a word it still repeats, and was set turning and has not been released. It is a figure of the summer, and its setting is the older marker for the end of that season. Sylissien, the cold lamp, is the lamp; the remaining 8 stars are counted against the turn. Those who keep the old year settle debts on the night it first clears the roofline.

Where to look

Right ascension: 20.69 h
Declination: -39.18°
Angular span: 26.7°
Stars in the figure: 9
Best season: summer (northern hemisphere)
Circumpolar: nowhere — it rises and sets at every inhabited latitude

Its stars

Letter	Name	Mag	Type	Distance	Temp
aiv	Sylissien“wind-thread, belonging to”	1.22	B5 V	60 pc	19,547 K
bhor	Ashedunis“ash-hill, little”	2.86	K4 III	167 pc	4,545 K
ciel	Nenaerar“rain-open-sky, one who”	2.88	B6 V	72 pc	16,335 K
dor	Exilorbis“exile-circling”	3.18	G9 III	128 pc	5,231 K
enn	Sylesmida“wind-forge, she who is”	3.45	B6 V	138 pc	17,759 K
fael	Thiragra“iron-field, she who is”	3.90	K1 II	119 pc	4,967 K
gyre	Ilmehaelen“dawn-breath, the many”	3.92	B9 V	44 pc	10,191 K
hesp	Solaceireth“solace-anger, of the”	4.14	M1 II	192 pc	3,616 K
ir	KS 1567	4.22	B6 V	168 pc	16,219 K

See Sylissien in the sky →

How this was made

Vanune was not designed. It was grown outward from Sylissien, 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.