Big Nugget

First Appearance and Context

Avout mention the Big Nugget as an old, well‑known episode and as a joking shorthand for a catastrophic asteroid threat to Arbre. In recollections shared during Apert, it is described that in an earlier era a large rock was thought to be on a collision course, prompting a major response. Later discussion of the starhenge notes that certain all‑sky instruments were installed around the time of the Big Nugget, reflecting heightened interest in tracking meteors and asteroids.

Roles/Actions and Affiliations

• Community mobilization: Thousands of Avout were assembled in a convox to build a spacecraft intended to nudge the incoming object. By the time the craft launched, cosmographers had revised their calculations and determined the rock would miss, and the effort shifted to a study mission.
• Institutional footprint: The laboratory where the ship was built later became known as the concent of Saunt Rab, named for the cosmographer credited with discovering the rock.
• Lasting practices: Starhenges worldwide added fixed all‑sky sensors (for example, the small fisheye device sometimes called “Clesthyra's Eye”) to record fast tracks across the sky, a legacy attributed to the Big Nugget period.
• Colloquial usage: Among avout, “the Big Nugget” is invoked as a half‑humorous benchmark for the kind of event that would surely draw the attention of the Sæcular Power. During a later Voco at the Concent of Saunt Edhar, when six names were read at once, it was noted that even during the Big Nugget the tally had been fewer.

Relationships

• Linked to the starhenge infrastructure atop the Præsidium, whose instruments and noon‑synchronizer are used for cosmographical observation; the all‑sky sensor addition is specifically tied to this episode. See Starhenge.
• Associated in memory with a convox of avout labor, cosmographers’ recalculations, and later naming of a concent for Saunt Rab (the discoverer of the rock).

Descriptions/Characteristics

• Nature: A near‑impact asteroid episode; the name also functions as a colloquial label for any feared planet‑killer on approach.
• Emphasis: Remembered as much for the mobilization it spurred and the observational habits it established as for the rock itself.
• Reasoning shorthand: In cosmographical reasoning, “a Big Nugget type of scenario” denotes an asteroid moving in a sun‑centered path similar to Arbre’s—i.e., a natural object in a heliocentric trajectory whose configuration can explain certain observations without invoking more unusual cases. This usage sits alongside distinctions among different orbits (e.g., sun‑centered versus Arbre‑centered) when avout discuss possible explanations.

Current Status/Location

The original object is remembered as a miss rather than a strike, studied after launch rather than deflected. The term persists in conversation, and the observational additions it inspired remain in use at starhenges.