Sirius

“ At length Sirius and all the brotherhood of our constellations and the galaxy of our heavens stood far below our feet as a little nebula amongst other yet more distant nebulæ. Thus we flew on through the starry wildernesses: one heaven after another unfurled its immeasurable banners before us, and then rolled up behind us: galaxy behind galaxy towered up into solemn altitudes before which the spirit shuddered; and they stood in long array through which the Infinite Being might pass in progress. ”

“ The reeds were stupendous, with fluted and flattened stems, eighteen inches in width, rising straight as arrows from the stagnant water, their crowns lost to view in the night haze, and mingling together far above the roof of the Sirius.
The malarious vapours rising from the stagnant water and the rotting vegetation were deadly in their subtleness, and in spite of our ever-increasing excitement and curiosity, Doctor Hermann insisted for our health's sake that we should return to the Sirius. A night amidst such poisonous gases might have stricken each one of us down with a fatal fever. ”

“ Sirius, or that blazing world Argus, may be the first watcher to send down a feeble ray; then follow another and another, all smiling meekly; but presently, in the short twilight of the latitude, the bright leaders of the starry host blaze forth in all their glory, and the sky is decked and spangled with superb brilliants.
In the twinkling of an eye, and faster than the admiring gazer can tell, the stars seem to leap out from their hiding-places. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Although, as a constellation, it is not to be compared with the brilliant Orion, yet, on account of the unrivaled magnificence of its chief star, Canis Major presents almost as attractive a scene as its more extensive rival. Everybody has heard of Sirius, or the Dog-Star, and everybody must have seen it flashing and scintillating so splendidly in the winter heavens, that to call it a first-magnitude star does it injustice, since no other star of that magnitude is at all comparable with it. Sirius, in fact, stands in a class by itself as the brightest star in the sky. ”

“ Every very bright star, when close to the horizon, shows these colours, and so much the more distinctly as the star is the brighter. Sirius, which surpasses the brightest stars of the northern hemisphere full four times in lustre, shows these changes of colour so conspicuously that they were regarded as specially characteristic of this star, insomuch that Homer speaks of Sirius (not by name, but as the 'star of autumn') shining most beautifully 'when laved of ocean's wave'—that is, when close to the horizon. ”

“ A glorious full moon sails across a sky without a cloud. A crisp night air has folks turning up coat collars and kids hopping up and down for warmth. And that giant star, Sirius, winking slyly, knows that soon, now, that light up in His Honor’s room window will go out. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the pure frosty air the stars seem splintered and multiplied indefinitely, and the brighter ones shine with a splendor of light and color unknown to the denizen of the smoky city, whose eyes are dulled and blinded by the glare of streetlights. There one may detect the delicate shade of green that lurks in the imperial blaze of Sirius, the beautiful rose-red light of Aldebaran, the rich orange hue of Betelgeuse, the blue-white radiance of Rigel, and the pearly luster of Capella. ”

“ I should have liked to believe it was Sirius, the "lucky" star sacred to Isis and Hathor; but Monny's schoolgirl knowledge of astronomy bereft me of that innocent pleasure. No wonder that the ancient Egyptians, with such jewels in their blue treasure-house, were famous astrologers and astronomers before the days when Rameses' daughter found Moses in the bulrushes of Roda Island!
The stars spoke to us as we walked, soft-footed, through the sand; and the pure wind of the desert spoke other words of the same language, the language of the Universe and of Nature. ”

“ Does it not seem strange that Sirius in the south should belong to the same group of stars as the five Great Bear stars in the north? The group is like a flock of birds flying just over our heads, some of which have passed us while others have not yet come up. ”

“ All these were no larger than when they had shone on earth; but the little stars that one scarce sees shone now as brightly as the first magnitudes had done, while the larger worlds were points of indescribable glory and colour. Aldebaran was a spot of blood-red fire, and Sirius condensed to one point the light of a world of sapphires. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sirius is about one hundred and twenty-three billions of miles distant from the earth. By photometric measurement it has been shown that, supposing the intensity [63] of the sun’s light for unit of surface to equal that of Sirius, it would require four hundred suns at the distance of Sirius to send us the light that star does; and our sun at the distance of Sirius would appear less than a star of the sixth magnitude, and be invisible to the naked eye. ”

“ When the piercing power and sultry heat of the sun abate, and almighty Zeus sends the autumn rains 1312, and men’s flesh comes to feel far easier,—for then the star Sirius passes over the heads of men, who are born to misery, only a little while by day and takes greater share of night,—then, when it showers its leaves to the ground and stops sprouting, the wood you cut with your axe is least liable to worm. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ There are 64 altogether. Two are of the 1st magnitude, two of the 2nd, four of the 3rd, four of the 4th, etc. Of these α (in the head) is the brightest in the whole heavens! It is called Sirius, the Prince (שַׂר, Sar) , as in Isa. ix. 6.
Sirius66 was, by the ancients, always associated with great heat. And the hottest part of the year we still call “the dog days,” though, through the variation as observed in different latitudes, and the precession of the equinoxes, its rising has long ceased to have any relation to those days. Virgil says that Sirius
“With pestilential heat infects the sky.” ”

“ The other symbolism is quite different; instead of a hippopotamus we deal with a cow.
In the inscriptions at Denderah we find the star Sirius represented by a cow in a boat. In the circular zodiac we have the cow in the boat, the point of the beginning of the year, and the constellation Orion, so located as to indicate clearly that, at that time, the beginning of the year fell between the heliacal rising of Sirius and of the stars in Orion. Sirius was Isis-Sothis. ”

“ Well, there is another queer thing about Sirius. He's got a big companion-star fussing round him, which gives such a dim light it can only be seen by the very biggest of astronomical telescopes. There is no reason why there should not be many invisible as well as visible stars in the firmament. ”

“ As sea-nymphs, they represent the treacherous calm of ocean, which conceals destruction beneath its smiling surface; or they signify the enervating influence of the hot wind (compare the name Sirius) , which shrivels up the fresh young life of vegetation. ”

“ And, by parity of reasoning, each of these orbs must have its own spiritual world, into which are continually pouring, through the gates of death, the inhabitants of those orbs, the good forming a heaven, and the evil, a hell, of their own. The star Sirius, the brightest of the fixed stars, the size of which, it has been estimated, cannot be much less than fourteen times that of our sun—what a grand and beautiful system of planets must be sweeping round that brilliant orb! ”

“ Sirius seems to have been worshipped by the ancient Egyptians under the name of Sothis, and it was regarded as the star of Isis and Osiris. The last name without the initial O very much resembles our modern name.
According to Al-Sufi, the Arabians called Sirius al-schira al-abûr, “Sirius which has passed across,” also al-schira al Jamânija, “the Sirius of Yémen.” He says it is called al-abûr, “because it has passed across the Milky Way into the southern region.” He relates a mythological story why Sirius “fled towards the south” and passed across the Milky Way towards Suhail (Canopus) . ”

“ 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. ”