Golarion's Astronomy - Cynosure

I  have always been fascinated by the night sky, in real life. Because of this, I've always considered Golarion's night sky to be one of the great, untapped resources in the Pathfinder campaign setting. So much of our collective mythology has been formed and is recorded in the heavens. And not just constellations, but asterisms, stars and planets. Golarion deserves an equally rich lore. Which is what I intend to lay the framework for.

Specifically, and after many months of searching, I've found a real stellar system somewhere in our galaxy which I think would make a decent proxy for Golarion. Obviously, not everything will match up, but enough will that this will  become a useful tool in both Pathfinder and Starfinder (because I'll be able to give distances to other stellar systems).

It's a path that will require many months to complete. I'm just getting started. But I wanted to give everyone a tiny taste of the night sky. If you are in the northern hemisphere and look up, one of the most obvious constellations is the Stair of Stars leading up to Cynosure - the pole star. Cynosure is where Desna reigns. And this is what it would look like:

The stair of stars on a nice, wintry night.

Let me annotate this for you:

the stair of stars, annotated.

Cynosure isn't exactly on the stairs - Desna watches the stairs from her throne just off to the right. Cynosure is a Magnitude 0 white - slightly blue star (which is on par with the some of the brightest stars in our night sky). In fact, if you take a simple, low powered telescope to the star, it will become apparent that it is, in fact, two stars! Indeed, the two stars slowly orbit around one another from Golarion's perspective, sometimes appearing as one or the other. When only one is present, Desna is out wandering the multiverse.

One last little thing - Cynosure isn't exactly due north. Maybe ten thousand years ago it was (because Golarion, like earth, wobbles) and maybe Earthfall permanently knocked Golarion's axis ever so slightly askew. But the true north pole is a few degrees north of Cynosure - about halfway between the star and the top of the photo.

That's all I have for now. I'll be back soon with some more of Golarion's astronomical wonders!