dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (01/11/86)
There's a greater and a lesser dog in the winter sky. More about these constellations -- when we come back. January 11 The Lesser Dog The Dog Star is Sirius, now easily visible in the south each evening -- the brightest star in the night sky. Sirius is located in the constellation Canis Major, the Greater Dog -- and there's also a lesser dog, Canis Minor, with its brightest star called Procyon. Procyon is a fairly bright star -- actually a double star -- but the constellation which contains it is a pretty pale companion to Canis Major. Besides Procyon, there's only one other star that's fairly bright in Canis Minor -- and these two stars don't make much of a dog. Still, Canis Minor and Canis Major were seen as dogs by the Roman stargazers. They're supposed to be companions to the constellation Orion the hunter, which rides high in the southern sky nearby. The stars Sirius and Procyon are located on opposite sides of the winter Milky Way -- the hazy and fainter counterpart to the bright summer Milky Way seen well in the evening in August. Many legends describe how the two stars came to be separated by this milky river in the sky. One Arabian legend tells of two sisters who tried to follow their brother across the sky. When they came to the great river, they tried to swim across -- and the stronger swimmer Sirius made it to the southern shore. But Procyon, the younger sister, was too weak to swim across. She remained weeping on the northern shore with her tears falling into the Milky Way. Script by Deborah Byrd. (c) Copyright 1985, 1986 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin