HMS Sirius

“ When we look at Sirius, in his solitary splendour in the midnight sky, pouring forth possibly fifty times the light and heat of our sun, upon a prodigiously greater planetary system than our own, it is natural to conjecture whether, among many other possibilities, it may be the seat of intelligence, perhaps of a transcendent character. ”

“ They hoped to obtain command of the vessel, when those in the other transports would follow their example, and they trusted that the entire fleet would fall into their power. The scheme was insane, as H.M.S. Sirius could knock the transports to pieces with her guns. The plot was betrayed by one of the convicts to the commanding officer on board the Scarborough, and he at once communicated with Captain Phillips. The two ringleaders were brought on board the Sirius, and each was given two dozen lashes. ”

“ But as observations on the companion of Sirius show that Sirius's mass is fully twenty times the sun's, and since the character of Sirius's spectrum indicates that its intrinsic brightness, surface for surface, is much superior to the sun's, it is probable that our estimate of the star's actual brilliancy, as compared with what the sun would possess at the same distance, viz., seventy-two times, is much nearer the truth. It is evident that life would be insupportable upon the earth if it were placed as near to Sirius as it is to the sun. ”

“ Their battlefleets were engaged in destroying all the cities of the allies, and those other helpless races of our system that they could. Those other inhabited worlds, many of which were completely wiped out because Arcot had no knowledge of them, were relieved only when the general call for retreat to protect the mother planet was sent out.
But Sirius was looming enormous before them. And its planets, heavily defended now by the combined Sirian, Terrestrial and Venerian fleets and great ray screens as well as a few matter-bomb stations, were suffering losses none the less. ”

“ When we look at Sirius, for instance, we do not see him surrounded by planets, for at such a distance no planet could be visible, even Sirius himself, though fourteen times larger than our sun, appearing only as a "twinkling little star." But a comparative survey of the heavens assures us that Sirius can hardly have arrived at his present stage of concentration without detaching, planet-forming rings, for there is no reason for supposing that mechanical laws out there are at all different from what they are in our own system. ”

“ Georges Steam Packet Coy. started their s.s. Sirius, for the voyage to New York, from London, on the 29th March. She had a tonnage of 700 tons, and her engines were of 320 horse-power. She was elegantly fitted-up, and started with 22 passengers, whose number was increased at Cork, and, being intended solely for a passenger boat, carried no cargo. On going down the Thames, she encountered her rival, the Great Western, which had a pleasure party on board, and a trial of speed took place between the two, resulting in favour of the Sirius. ”

“ As soon as the fleet was fairly launched into space the torpedo-nets were let down, in case the ships might come into contact with any of the enemy's swift cruisers. As they got further away from Neptune, the sun gradually became smaller and its light fainter, until at last all the vessels were obliged to turn on their searchlights to enable them to avoid colliding with one another. They directed their course straight for Sirius, as it was presumed that the enemy would probably steer for the Solar System, and so they would be likely to run straight into them. ”

“ As soon as the meal was over, the ceremony of christening the carriage was performed by Sandy cracking a bottle of wine against the side, and as the ruddy liquid streamed to the ground, the Doctor pronounced the few words that gave to the machine its name of Sirius.
"Now, my friends, the all-eventful moment has come," he continued, leading the way to a rope-ladder which was hanging down the dark side of the Sirius, from the doorway high overhead. "Let us bid adieu to the Earth that bore and fostered us; it may be that our feet touch its surface for the last time." ”

“ Sirius is the Dog Star, and it is perhaps fortunate that, as he is placed, he can be seen sometimes in the southern and sometimes in the northern skies, so that many more people have a chance of looking at his wonderful brilliancy, than if he had been placed near the Pole star. In speaking of the supreme brightness of Sirius among the stars, we must remember that Venus and Jupiter, which outrival him, are not stars, but planets, and that they are much nearer to us. ”

“ It is not therefore wholly dark, but it shines with so feeble a light that, if it were brought as near to us as our own sun, it would appear only one-hundredth as bright as he is, even though it is a somewhat more massive body. Sirius itself is only about two and a half times as massive as our sun, but immensely more brilliant. It is the typical star of the “Sirian” class, to which belong many of the [Pg 20] brightest stars in the heavens, white stars in whose spectra broad hydrogen lines form the most striking feature, indicating a very extensive atmosphere of glowing hydrogen. ”

“ Aside from the fact of its surpassing brilliance, the fact that Sirius is visible from every habitable portion of the globe has served to make it from time immemorial the nocturnal cynosure of all the nations of the earth. ”

“ In other words, our sun and some of the nearer stars appear to form a group, or family, of which Sirius is probably the chief.
Sirius is an intensely white star, but its whiteness is shot with a tint of blue or green. It has not the purity of light of Spica. Owing also to its great brilliance, it twinkles incessantly, darting, in an unsteady atmosphere, rays of all the colors of the rainbow. The spectroscope shows that it is a sun at an [Pg 100] earlier stage of development than ours. ”

“ The line of the belt of Orion continued downwards to the left conducts the eye to the gem of the sky, the splendid Sirius, which is the most brilliant star in the heavens. It has, indeed, been necessary to create a special order of magnitude for the reception of Sirius alone; all the other first magnitude stars, such as Vega and Capella, Betelgeuze and Aldebaran, coming a long way behind. Sirius, with a few other stars of much less lustre, form the constellation of Canis Major. ”

“ They are yet young men who remember the arrival of the Sirius and the Liverpool and the Great Western. Their coming was the occasion of a thousandfold greater excitement than the laying of the cable. Yet if some visionary enthusiast had said to his friend as they watched with awe the steaming in or out of those huge ships, ‘Before we are bald or gray we shall look upon these vessels as we now look from the express train upon the slow old stage-coaches,’ he would have been tolerated only as a harmless maniac.... ”

“ Its absolute magnitude is -0m.3, i.e., fainter than the apparent magnitude, from which we may conclude that it has a distance from us smaller than one siriometer. We find, indeed, from the eighth column that r = 0.5 sir. The proper motion of Sirius is 1′′.32 per year, which is rather large but still not among the largest proper motions as will be seen below. From the 11th column we find that Sirius is moving towards us with a velocity of 1.6 sir./st. (= 7.6 km./sec.) , a rather small velocity. The third column shows that its right ascension is 6h 40m and its declination -16°. ”

“ The extraordinary size and brilliancy of Sirius might naturally enough lead one to suppose that it is the nearest of the stars, and such it was once believed to be. Observations of stellar parallax, however, show that this was a mistake. The distance of Sirius is so great that no satisfactory determination of it has yet been made. We may safely say, though, that that distance is, at the least calculation, 50,000,000,000,000 miles. In other words, Sirius is about 537,000 times as [113] far from the earth as the sun is. ”

“ Switch after switch drove home, and one after another those frightful fields of force, those products of the mightiest minds of three planets, were hurled out against the tiny Jovian sphere. Driven as they were by the millions upon millions of horsepower stored in the accumulators of the Sirius they formed a coruscating spherical shell of intolerable energy all around the enemy vessel, but even their prodigious force was held at bay by the powerful defensive screens of the smaller space-ship. ”

“ Sirius is about ten times as bright as Altair. While, if seen from the same distance, Sirius would appear at least thirty times as bright as the sun, at our actual distance from both the light received from the sun is to that received from Sirius in the ratio of about 7,000,000,000 to 1. While by no means the largest sun in the universe, Sirius is the largest sun in our part of space, and some indications have been detected that it may, to a certain extent, control the motion of the solar system. ”

“ The transit of large stars, unless where none of the 6th or 7th magnitude could be had, has generally been declined in my sweeps, even with the 20-feet telescope. And I remember, that after a considerable sweep with the 40-feet instrument, the appearance of Sirius announced itself, at a great distance, like the dawn of the morning, and came on by degrees, increasing in brightness, till this brilliant star at last entered the field of view of the telescope, with all the splendour of the rising sun, and forced me to take the eye from that beautiful sight. ”

“ As it is seen, this star is quite small by the side of Sirius, but still larger than Jupiter relatively to our sun. Is it an immense planet, totally opaque and shining only by reflection of the light of Sirius? This is not probable; it must still be self-luminous just as our own earth was during so many ages. It does not correspond exactly to the observed perturbations, a fact which
proves that the system of Sirius certainly contains other worlds yet unseen. ”

“ Sirius, which is in Canis Major (one of Orion’s hunting dogs) , is a far more glorious orb than our Sun. According to recent photometric measurements it emits seventy times the quantity of light, and is three times more massive than the great luminary of our system. At the distance of Sirius (fifty billions of miles) the Sun would shrink to the dimensions of a third-magnitude star, and the light of seventy such stars would be required to equal in appearance the brilliant radiance of the great dog-star. ”

“ It would be very surprising, if we assume, as we are bound to do, that these temples to stars were built under Egyptian influence, that Sirius should not be represented among them, that being the paramount star in Egypt at a time when we should expect to find her influence most important in Greece. Still, I have shown already that, as the Greek year ignored the solstice, the use of Sirius as a warning star for all purposes of utility would not come in. Mr. Penrose finds, however, that, in spite of this, Sirius was used for temple-worship. ”

“ Taking, then, all these inscriptions together, we have an absolute astronomical demonstration of the fact that the "rising of Hathor," which is referred to mythologically in the inscriptions given by Mariette, was the rising of Sirius; that the star which "shone into the temple, and which mingled her light with the light of her father Rā," was really the star Sirius. We get the demonstration of the fact that mythologically the star Sirius was Hathor, or otherwise Isis.
In other words, we find a star personified; Sirius being personified as Hathor or Isis. ”

“ It will be eleven more years before we will know whether we can ever communicate with the Sirian men. The speed of light is too low for rapid communication, and as the first signals were sent out in September, 1961, and it is now September, 1968, the signals are not due to reach Sirius for two years more. ”

“ Sometimes these stars are so close that the two pass for one, till an improvement in the telescope separates the companions, and shows them to be distinct. Herschel had this experience, and one of the most singular instances of it is not yet thirty years old. The dog-star Sirius is among the best known stars in our southern skies. Its brightness is forty- to sixty-fold that of the sun, its distance is such that a flash of light from it takes perhaps ten years to reach our eyes, and its weight exceeds that of two of our suns. ”

“ If he could emerge into normal space at the proper distance from Sirius he would have power from it to operate the communicator. The Thunderbolt would come at once when it received his message and swallow the little Argosy in its enormous hold. The return to Earth would be the swift one through the warp and the Slug cruisers, so bold in pursuit of unarmed interplanetary ships, would quickly cease to exist. ”

“ If Sirius had a parallax of half a second, its distance from the earth would be 525481 times the distance of the sun from the earth; and therefore Sirius, placed where the sun is, would appear to us to be 3.7 times as large as the sun, and would give 13.8 times more light; but many of the fixed stars must be immensely greater than Sirius. Sometimes stars have all at once appeared, shone with a brilliant light, and then vanished. In 1572 a star was discovered in Cassiopeia, which rapidly increased in brightness till it even surpassed that of Jupiter ”

“ On her first return voyage from New York she took fifteen days, and the Sirius seventeen. The Great Western had no such trouble with her “coal-endurance” on her maiden voyage as the Sirius had suffered, for she had reached New York with one quarter of her coals still unconsumed, and the obvious conclusion which came to any reasoning mind was that it certainly paid to build a vessel big enough to carry plenty of fuel. ”