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 Ancient of Days threw it from him, and with an air of exulting triumph exclaimed, "There, that will do! I cannot mend it." The image was used as the cover for Stephen Hawking's book "God Created the Integers". There are currently thirteen known extant copies of "Europe a Prophecy". Because of Blake's production process of hand colouring each print, each image has own unique qualities. The following images of "The Ancient of Days" are those available via the digital archiving project, the William Blake Archive: The Ancient of Days The Ancient of Days is a design by William Blake, originally published as the