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
Sirius a different position, appears as "sigu tolo". All agree, however, that they learned about the star from Griaule." Noah Brosch explained in his book "Sirius Matters" that the cultural transfer of relatively modern astronomical information could have taken place in 1893, when a French expedition arrived in Central West Africa to observe the total eclipse on April 16. In the religion of the Serer people of Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania, Sirius is called "Yoonir" from the Serer language (and some of the Cangin language speakers, who are all ethnically Serers). The star Sirius is one of the most important