Helliconia

1

The legendary King Denniss was ruling in Year 249 before apastron, and foresaw disaster. His calendar has been discarded.

2

The full and correct name of this year in the Ancipital calendar, forged in the ancipital cotemporal brain, is: ‘Year After Small Apotheosis of Great year 5,634,000 Since catastrophe’. That is, since Freyr’s capture of Batalix, some 8,000,280 years previously.

3

Eclipses occur in the following manner. The orbits of Helliconia and her sister planets lie at a 10° inclination to the orbit of Batalix and Freyr about each other. Helliconia’s orbit crosses the greater orbital plane at two points. Joining these two points is the line of the nodes. When the line of the nodes passes through Freyr, so that Helliconia, Batalix, and Freyr are aligned, then eclipses of the greater light will occur.

A lesser eclipse cycle occurs on the other side of periastron, lasting for 9.45 years. In accordance with Kepler’s laws, Batalix speeds up when closer to Freyr. It therefore takes less time to move from the Fat Death eclipses to the post-periastron position than from the post-periastron position to the Fat Death position in 630 E yrs AA. So the second eclipse series commences in the year 1424 E yrs AA.