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

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a b Tetzlaff, N.; Neuhäuser, R.; Hohle, M. M. (January 2011). "A Catalogue of Young Runaway Hipparcos Stars within 3 kpc from the Sun". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 410 (1): 190–200. arXiv: 1007.4883. Bibcode: 2011MNRAS.410..190T. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.17434.x. S2CID 118629873.

A heart-wrenching and richly written story about loss and survival — and, more important, about learning to love again…. The Dog Stars is a love story, but not just in the typical sense. It’s an ode to friendship between two men, a story of the strong bond between a human and a dog, and a reminder of what is worth living for. As Hig ponders early in the novel: “So I wonder what it is this need to tell. To animate somehow the deathly stillness of the profoundest beauty. Breathe life in the telling.” Hellbent On Changing Her Station From Actress To Writer-Director, Jennifer Esposito Signs With Echo Lake For Filmmaking After ‘Fresh Kills’ Debut Decisively strikes at the ever-arching desire to know what makes us human…. Gruff, tormented and inspirational, Heller has the astonishing ability to make you laugh, cringe and feel ridiculously vulnerable throughout the novel…One of the most powerful reads in years.” The diameter of the primary star, Sirius A, was first measured by Robert Hanbury Brown and Richard Q. Twiss at Jodrell Bank in 1959. New Regency, Smith and Cliff Roberts ( Emancipation, The Midnight Sky) will produce. Heller, Lily Brooks-Dalton and Brandon Scott Smith will be executive producers. They are already talking to a big star.

The Dog Star Sirius in Millennia of Astronomy and Mythology

The Chinese knew Sirius as the star of the “celestial wolf.” In anicent times, they visualised the constellations Puppis and Canis Major as a large bow and arrow, with the arrow tip pointed at the wolf. To the Māori, the star marked the beginning of the winter season. They had the same name to describe both the star and the season: Takurua. Epsilon, Omicron 2, Delta, and Eta Canis Majoris were called Al Adzari "the virgins" in medieval Arabic tradition. [38] Marking the dog's right thigh on Bayer's atlas is Epsilon Canis Majoris, [33] also known as Adhara. At magnitude 1.5, it is the second-brightest star in Canis Major and the 23rd-brightest star in the sky. It is a blue-white supergiant of spectral type B2Iab, around 404 light-years from Earth. [39] This star is one of the brightest known extreme ultraviolet sources in the sky. [40] It is a binary star; the secondary is of magnitude 7.4. Its traditional name means "the virgins", having been transferred from the group of stars to Epsilon alone. [41] Nearby is Delta Canis Majoris, also called Wezen. It is a yellow-white supergiant of spectral type F8Iab and magnitude 1.84, around 1605 light-years from Earth. [42] With a traditional name meaning "the weight", Wezen is 17 times as massive and 50,000 times as luminous as the Sun. If located in the centre of the Solar System, it would extend out to Earth as its diameter is 200 times that of the Sun. Only around 10million years old, Wezen has stopped fusing hydrogen in its core. Its outer envelope is beginning to expand and cool, and in the next 100,000 years it will become a red supergiant as its core fuses heavier and heavier elements. Once it has a core of iron, it will collapse and explode as a supernova. [43] Nestled between Adhara and Wezen lies Sigma Canis Majoris, known as Unurgunite to the Boorong and Wotjobaluk people, [23] a red supergiant of spectral type K7Ib that varies irregularly between magnitudes 3.43 and 3.51. [44]

In ancient times, the Dog Star’s heliacal rising marked the flooding of the Nile in Egypt, while the Greeks associated it with the “dog days” of summer, referring to the period from July 3 to August 11, when the star rises in conjunction with the Sun.The Winter Triangle: Procyon (top left), Betelgeuse (top right), Sirius (base). Image: Hubble European Space Agency, credit: Akira Fujii In Greek Mythology, Canis Major represented the dog Laelaps, a gift from Zeus to Europa; or sometimes the hound of Procris, Diana's nymph; or the one given by Aurora to Cephalus, so famed for its speed that Zeus elevated it to the sky. [5] It was also considered to represent one of Orion's hunting dogs, [6] pursuing Lepus the Hare or helping Orion fight Taurus the Bull; and is referred to in this way by Aratos, Homer and Hesiod. The ancient Greeks refer only to one dog, but by Roman times, Canis Minor appears as Orion's second dog. Alternative names include Canis Sequens and Canis Alter. [5] Canis Syrius was the name used in the 1521 Alfonsine tables. [5] 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]

Canis Major is also home to many variable stars. EZ Canis Majoris is a Wolf–Rayet star of spectral type WN4 that varies between magnitudes 6.71 and 6.95 over a period of 3.766 days; the cause of its variability is unknown but thought to be related to its stellar wind and rotation. [63] VY Canis Majoris is a remote red hypergiant located approximately 3,800 light-years away from Earth. It is one of largest stars known (sometimes described as the largest known) [64] and is also one of the most luminous with a radius varying from 1,420 to 2,200 times the Sun's radius, and a luminosity around 300,000 times greater than the Sun. Its current mass is about 17 ± 8 solar masses, having shed material from an initial mass of 25–32 solar masses. [65] [66] VY CMa is also surrounded by a red reflection nebula that has been made by the material expelled by the strong stellar winds of its central star. W Canis Majoris is a type of red giant known as a carbon star—a semiregular variable, it ranges between magnitudes 6.27 and 7.09 over a period of 160 days. [67] A cool star, it has a surface temperature of around 2,900 K and a radius 234 times that of the Sun, its distance estimated at 1,444–1,450 light-years from Earth. [68] At the other extreme in size is RX J0720.4-3125, a neutron star with a radius of around 5km. [69] Exceedingly faint, it has an apparent magnitude of 26.6. [70] Its spectrum and temperature appear to be mysteriously changing over several years. The nature of the changes are unclear, but it is possible they were caused by an event such as the star's absorption of an accretion disc. [69] Delta Canis Majoris – Variable Star". SIMBAD Astronomical Database. Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg . Retrieved 16 February 2014.The Romans, similarly, celebrated the star’s heliacal rising around April 25, and would sacrifice a dog and a sheep to the goddess Robigo in the hope that the star would not cause wheat rust on their crops that year. They called the hottest days of the summer dies caniculares and Sirius was known as Canicula, or “little dog.” At the closest approach every 50 years, Sirius A and Sirius B can only be resolved with a 12-inch telescope in good viewing conditions. As the two stars approach each other, huge magnetic storms are created between them and both stars start to spin faster as a result of tidal forces getting stronger.

In 1915, Walter Sydney Adams, using a 60-inch (1.5m) reflector at Mount Wilson Observatory, observed the spectrum of SiriusB and determined that it was a faint whitish star. [53] This led astronomers to conclude that it was a white dwarf—the second to be discovered. [54] The diameter of SiriusA was first measured by Robert Hanbury Brown and Richard Q. Twiss in 1959 at Jodrell Bank using their stellar intensity interferometer. [55] In 2005, using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers determined that SiriusB has nearly the diameter of the Earth, 12,000 kilometres (7,500mi), with a mass 102% of the Sun's. [56] Colour controversy [ edit ] Twinkling of Sirius ( apparent magnitude = −1.5) in the evening shortly before upper culmination on the southern meridian at a height of 20degrees above the horizon. During 29 seconds Sirius moves on an arc of 7.5 minutes from the left to the right. Mateu, Cecilia; Vivas, A. Katherina; Zinn, Robert; Miller, Lissa R.; Abad, Carlos (2009). "No Excess of RR Lyrae Stars in the Canis Major Overdensity". The Astronomical Journal. 37 (5): 4412–23. arXiv: 0903.0376. Bibcode: 2009AJ....137.4412M. doi: 10.1088/0004-6256/137/5/4412. S2CID 18967866.

The Sirius “Mystery”

Several terms redirect here. For other uses, see Sirius (disambiguation), Sirius B (disambiguation),and Dog Star (disambiguation). Last-Name Basis: Bangley, who never tells Higs his first name even after nine years of living together. Higs has to find out from someone else. The Greeks noticed that the star’s appearance in the sky heralded the hot, dry summer season. Sirius was known to twinkle more in the early summer and the Greeks interpreted this as a malignant influence. The star was often described as “burning” in various texts, and the season it heralded became known as the dog days of summer.