Saunt Tancred's Nebula

First Appearance and Context

The nebula is first introduced as a study image assigned on a photomnemonic tablet by Fraa Orolo inside the Concent of Saunt Edhar near Apert. Later, the same tablet is shown in a small heated chapel on the roof‑level Starhenge, where its time‑layered image is demonstrated to an extramuros artisan.

Roles/Actions and Affiliations

• Teaching and archive record: The tablet captures the night of Tancred’s Star exploding (a supernova) and then, on each clear night, adds a frame as the nebula grows; this sequence can be browsed by sliding a finger along the tablet’s edge and zoomed to its resolution limit. The original tablet was installed in the great telescope of Tancred’s concent beginning in 490 and was left in place, accumulating nightly images, until 2999; copies were later distributed among the Millenarians.
• In‑math use: Within Saunt Edhar’s community the tablet serves as a concrete image for cosmography problems and discussion.

Relationships

• Eponym: Named for Saunt Tancred, whose observation of the supernova initiated the long‑running record on the tablet.
• Pedagogical context: Set and discussed under Fraa Orolo’s guidance and kept at hand in starhenge workrooms for ongoing reference during the current Apert.

Descriptions/Characteristics

• Dynamic image: The photomnemonic tablet contains layered images spanning centuries; users can scroll the time dimension and magnify details to the tablet’s resolution limit. At the earliest layer the image collapses to a single dazzling point (the exploding star); at later layers the expanding nebula is visible against fixed background stars.
• Instrumentation: The tablet functions are built into the medium itself; no external apparatus is required once an image sequence has been recorded in a telescope.

Current Status/Location

One such tablet is kept in a small heated chapel on the Starhenge roof at the Concent of Saunt Edhar and is actively used and demonstrated during Apert.