Sirius was known as Sothis to the ancient Egyptians, who were aware that it made its first heliacal rising (i.e., rose just before sunrise) of the year at about the time the annual floods were beginning in the Nile River delta. Its name comes from a Greek word meaning “sparkling” or “scorching.” Its distance from the solar system is 8.6 light-years, only twice the distance of the nearest known star system beyond the Sun, the Alpha Centauri system.
It has a radius 1.71 times that of the Sun and a surface temperature of 9,940 kelvins (K), which is more than 4,000 K higher than that of the Sun. The bright component of the binary is a blue-white star 25.4 times as luminous as the Sun. It is a binary star in the constellation Canis Major. Sirius, also called Alpha Canis Majoris or the Dog Star, brightest star in the night sky, with apparent visual magnitude −1.46.
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