The Dog Stars: The hope-filled story of a world changed by global catastrophe

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Jiang, Xiao-Yuan (April 1993). "The colour of Sirius as recorded in ancient Chinese texts". Chinese Astronomy and Astrophysics. 17 (2): 223–228. Bibcode: 1993ChA&A..17..223J. doi: 10.1016/0275-1062(93)90073-X. van Beek, W.A.E.; Bedaux; Blier; Bouju; Crawford; Douglas; Lane; Meillassoux (1991). "Dogon Restudied: A Field Evaluation of the Work of Marcel Griaule". Current Anthropology. 32 (2): 139–167. doi: 10.1086/203932. JSTOR 2743641. S2CID 224796672. In ancient Egypt, Sirius was known as Sopdet (Greek: Σῶθις, or Sothis), the goddess who was part of the triad with her husband Osiris and son Horus. The hieroglyph for Sothis has a star and a triangle.

Espenak, Fred. "Mars Ephemeris". Twelve Year Planetary Ephemeris: 1995–2006, NASA Reference Publication 1349. Archived from the original on 17 February 2013. Alpha Canis Majoris appears as a single star to the unaided eye, but it is really a binary star system, composed of a white main sequence star belonging to the spectral class A1 V, known as Sirius A or Alpha Canis Majoris A, and a dim white dwarf with the stellar classification DA2, designated Sirius B or Alpha Canis Majoris B. The only objects in the sky brighter than Sirius are the Moon, Venus, Jupiter, and occasionally Mercury and Mars. a b Holberg, J.B.; Oswalt, T.D.; Sion, E.M.; Barstow, M.A.; Burleigh, M.R. (2013). "Where are all the Sirius-like binary systems?". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 435 (3): 2077–2091. arXiv: 1307.8047. Bibcode: 2013MNRAS.435.2077H. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stt1433. S2CID 54551449. Ancient Polynesians used Sirius for navigation, and saw it as part of the Great Bird constellation called Manu. The bright star Canopus in Carina marked the southern wingtip and Procyon in Canis Minor the northern one. The constellation divided the sky into two hemispheres, and the stars were used as latitude markers. The declination of Sirius matches the latitude of Fiji at 17°S, which means that the star passes directly over the islands every night.Galvan, Dennis Charles, The State Must be our Master of Fire: How Peasants Craft Culturally Sustainable Development in Senegal, Berkeley, University of California Press, (2004), pp. 86–135, ISBN 978-0-520-23591-5. The Dog Stars is a post-apocalyptic fiction novel by Peter Heller. Set in Colorado, a man lives a lonesome existence in an airplane hangar with his dog and a door gunman he has befriended. When a mysterious transmission comes through on the radio while he’s flying his old Cessna, it sparks a hunt for the provenance of the sound. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Reception [ edit ] Sirius has more than 50 names and designations attached to it. In medieval astrolabes from western Europe it is called Alhabor. This is the name Geoffrey Chaucer used in his Treatise on the Astrolabe, with the star depicted as a dog’s head. An X-ray image of the Sirius star system located 8.6 light years from Earth. This image shows two sources and a spike-like pattern due to the support structure for the transmission grating. The bright source is Sirius B, a white dwarf star that has a surface temperature of about 25,000 degrees Celsius which produces very low energy X-rays. The dim source at the position of Sirius A – a normal star more than twice as massive as the Sun – may be due to ultraviolet radiation from Sirius A leaking through the filter on the detector. In contrast, Sirius A is the brightest star in the northern sky when viewed with an optical telescope, while Sirius B is 10,000 times dimmer. Because the two stars are so close together Sirius B escaped detection until 1862 when Alvan Clark discovered it while testing one of the best optical telescopes in the world at that time. Image: NASA/SAO/CXC

In a Dogon myth explaining the origin of the human race, humanity was born from the Nommo, a race of amphibians who came to Earth from a planet orbiting Sirius. The Nommo are said to have given humans profound knowledge, including information about Sirius and our own solar system. Location Henshaw, C. (1984). "On the Visibility of Sirius in Daylight". Journal of the British Astronomical Association. 94 (5): 221–222. Bibcode: 1984JBAA...94..221H.

In 1717, Edmond Halley discovered the proper motion of the hitherto presumed fixed stars [37] after comparing contemporary astrometric measurements with those from the second century AD given in Ptolemy's Almagest. The bright stars Aldebaran, Arcturus and Sirius were noted to have moved significantly; Sirius had progressed about 30 arcminutes (about the diameter of the Moon) to the southwest. [38] In India, the star is sometimes known as Svana, the dog of Prince Yudhistira, who set out of a long journey to find the kingdom of heaven with his four brothers. The journey was a difficult one and, one by one, the brothers abandoned the search. When Yudhistira reached the gates of heaven, Lord Indra welcomed him, but would not let Svana enter. The prince told him that he himself would not enter if his faithful servant was denied entrance. This is what the Lord wanted to hear, and he then allowed them both through the gates. On the island of Ceos, inhabitants would offer sacrifices to Zeus and Sirius to bring cooling breezes and, if Sirius rose clear, they would see this as a sign of good fortune. If the star was faint or misty, it foretold pestilence. Archaeologists found coins on the island dating from the 3rd century BC that featured dogs and stars with emanating rays. Makemson, Maud Worcester (1941). The Morning Star Rises: An Account of Polynesian Astronomy. Yale University Press. Bibcode: 1941msra.book.....M. Adams, W. S. (December 1915). "The Spectrum of the Companion of Sirius". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 27 (161): 236–237. Bibcode: 1915PASP...27..236A. doi: 10.1086/122440.