Sirius in fiction below)—and even if such were eventually discovered, with an estimated age of 230 million years the system is too young to have fostered the development of life or a complex biosphere. Sirius AB is the alpha star of the constellation Canis Major (the great dog, sometimes styled as Orion's hunting dog), whence its cognomen "the dog star". The most commonly used proper name of this star comes through the Latin "Sirius", from the Greek Σείριος ("Seirios", "glowing" or "scorcher"). The ancient Greeks observed that the appearance of Sirius heralded the hot and dry "dog days" of summer, and feared that
The Sirius Mystery about Sirius B. They could very well have acquired such knowledge abroad, passing it on to their tribe later. Sirius B was first observed in 1862, and had been predicted in 1844 on dynamic grounds. However, Oberg does concede that such assumptions of recent acquisition are "entirely circumstantial" and have no foundation in documented evidence. The skeptic Jason Colavito counts "The Sirius Mystery" among the body of works in a tradition of ancient astronaut ideas that was ultimately inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos in his 2005 book "The Cult of Alien Gods: H. P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial Pop