Sirius its constellation, Canis Major (Greater Dog). The heliacal rising of Sirius marked the flooding of the Nile in Ancient Egypt and the "dog days" of summer for the ancient Greeks, while to the Polynesians in the Southern Hemisphere the star marked winter and was an important reference for their navigation around the Pacific Ocean. The brightest star in the night sky, Sirius is recorded in the earliest astronomical records. Its displacement from the ecliptic causes this heliacal rising to be remarkably regular compared to other stars, with a period of almost exactly 365.25 days holding it constant relative to the
Sirius The other two are the Hyades and the Pleiades, and each of these clusters consists of hundreds of stars. In 2017, a massive star cluster was discovered only 10' from Sirius. It was discovered during a statistical analysis of Gaia data. The cluster is over a thousand times further away from us than the star system. The most commonly used proper name of this star comes from the Latin "Sīrius", from the Ancient Greek "Σείριος" ("Seirios", "glowing" or "scorcher"), although the Greek word itself may have been imported from elsewhere before the Archaic period, one authority suggesting a link with