Stellar Heliacal Case Ledger (2026-04-09)

Purpose:

• provide the concrete case ledger for expanding stellar heliacal validation
• turn the stellar corpus-design document into explicit current and future rows
• keep validation-row design separate from broad test implementation

Upstream documents:

• wiki/03_validation/STELLAR_HELIACAL_VALIDATION_CORPUS_2026-04-09.md
• wiki/03_validation/STELLAR_HELIACAL_CANDIDATE_SOURCE_LEDGER_2026-04-09.md
• wiki/03_validation/HELIACAL_VALIDATION_MATRIX_2026-04-09.md

Current status:

• partially populated ledger
• one current admitted row now explicitly captures the stellar slice already embodied in tests/integration/test_visibility_validation.py

Current Admitted Slice

Existing stellar validation already covers a narrow slice with:

• the Sirius / Sothic 139 AD anchor family
• generalized stellar event routing against the direct star-heliacal path

This ledger is for what comes next, not for pretending the current slice is already broad.

Current Admitted Rows

Admitted row	Star	Event kind	Start JD / date	Observer	Source kind	Expected form	Current enforcement path	Notes
SHR-001	Sirius	heliacal rising	139-01-01 start search	31.2°N, 29.9°E	repo-admitted historical anchor slice	generalized stellar event equals direct star-heliacal path within 1 minute and falls within 5 days before the Sothic rising entry	tests/integration/test_visibility_validation.py, tests/fixtures/stellar_heliacal_reference.json	Current governing stellar validation row.

Candidate Case Table

Case ID	Star	Event kind	Latitude band	Source kind	Expected form	Difficulty	Admission status	Notes
SHC-001	Sirius	heliacal rising	Alexandria / Egyptian context	admitted historical anchor	bounded relation to the Sothic anchor and direct star path	medium	admitted_current_slice	Existing governing row.
SHC-002	non-Sirius bright star	heliacal rising	low or mid latitude	candidate needed	exact date or bounded window	medium-hard	candidate_needed	First non-Sirius expansion row should be historically prominent and unambiguous.
SHC-003	non-Sirius bright star	heliacal rising	contrasting declination geometry	candidate needed	exact date or bounded window	medium-hard	candidate_needed	Choose to widen geometry rather than duplicate Sirius-like conditions.
SHC-004	bright star with modern observational study	heliacal rising or setting	documented site	candidate needed	exact date or bounded window	hard	candidate_needed	Use only if the observational criterion is explicit enough to compare.
SHC-005	non-Sirius bright star	heliacal setting	any credible latitude	optional later	exact date or bounded window	hard	optional_later	Add only after the rising-family corpus is established.

Admission Status Meanings

• admitted_current_slice already embodied in the current test suite and validation matrix
• candidate_needed no concrete validation row captured yet
• captured_pending_review row identified but not yet admitted
• admitted_future_row ready for future validation implementation
• optional_later should not be pursued until the core rising-family rows exist

Row Requirements

Each future admitted row should specify:

• star
• event kind
• source citation
• source type
• observer latitude
• observer longitude or site/region
• start date or JD
• expected exact date or allowed event window
• tolerance
• notes on visibility criterion or calendrical ambiguity

Priority Order

1. preserve and keep enforcing the current Sirius anchor row
2. capture the first non-Sirius bright-star rising row with explicit semantics
3. capture a second non-Sirius row with materially different geometry
4. only then pursue stellar setting rows or more difficult modern observational cases

Current Honest State

Stellar heliacal validation is real but still thin.

This ledger exists so the next expansion becomes a designed corpus rather than a drift of miscellaneous star references.

The next real blocker is not implementation of a new star-event function. It is admission of at least one non-Sirius external stellar row with explicit event semantics.