Disheartened company proclaimed rising stars (6)
I believe the answer is:
cygnus
'stars' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'disheartened company proclaimed rising' is the wordplay.
'disheartened' means to remove the middle letters.
'proclaimed' becomes 'sung'.
'rising' shows that the letters should be reversed in order (going up in a down clue).
'company' with its middle taken out is 'cy'.
'sung' written backwards gives 'gnus'.
'cy'+'gnus'='CYGNUS'
(Other definitions for cygnus that I've seen before include "The Swan seen at night" , "Prominent northern constellation, the Swan" , "Stars" , "Operator" .)