SIRIUS

, the Dog-star; a very bright star of the first magnitude, in the mouth of the constellation Canis Major, or the Great Dog.

This is the brightest of all the stars in our firmanent, and therefore probably, says Dr. Maskelyne, the astronomer royal, the nearest to us of them all, in a paper recommending the discovery of its parallax, Philos. Trans. vol. 2, pa. 889. Some however suppose Arcturus to be the nearest.

The Arabs call it Aschere, Elschecre, Scera; the Greeks, Sirius; and the Latins, Canicula, or Canis candens. See Canicula.

This is one of the earliest named stars in the whole heavens. Hesiod and Homer mention only four or five constellations, or stars, and this is one of them. Sirius and Orion, the Hyades, Pleiades, and Arcturus are almost the whole of the old poetical astronomy. The three last the Greeks formed of their own observation, as appears by the names; the two others were Egyptian. Sirius was so called from the Nile, one of the names of that river being Siris; and the Egyptians, seeing that river begin to swell at the time of a particular rising of this star, paid divine honours to the star, and called it by a name derived from that of the river, expressing the star of the Nile.