truckmount girl said:
Isn't he going to have trouble from Sirius/XM satellite radio? I know it's a cleaning supply biz and the other is a satellite radio company, but you couldn't open a Harley Davidson Cleaning Supply without getting the shit sued out of you. Hopefully Sirius/XM isn't a litigious company.
Welcome, we look forward to your input and contributions.
Take care,
Lisa
Sirius is a star. You can't trademark a star
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. With a visual apparent magnitude of ?1.46, it is almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest star. The name "Sirius" is derived from the Ancient Greek: ??????? Seirios ("glowing" or "scorcher"). The star has the Bayer designation Alpha Canis Majoris (? CMa). What the naked eye perceives as a single star is actually a binary star system, consisting of a white main sequence star of spectral type A1V, termed Sirius A, and a faint white dwarf companion of spectral type DA2, termed Sirius B. The distance separating Sirius A from its companion varies between 8.1 and 31.5 AU.[16]
Sirius appears bright because of both its intrinsic luminosity and its proximity to Earth. At a distance of 2.6 parsecs (8.6 ly), the Sirius system is one of Earth's near neighbors. Sirius A is about twice as massive as the Sun and has an absolute visual magnitude of 1.42. It is 25 times more luminous than the Sun[6] but has a significantly lower luminosity than other bright stars such as Canopus or Rigel. The system is between 200 and 300 million years old.[6] It was originally composed of two bright bluish stars. The more massive of these, Sirius B, consumed its resources and became a red giant before shedding its outer layers and collapsing into its current state as a white dwarf around 120 million years ago.[6]
Sirius is also known colloquially as the "Dog Star", reflecting its prominence in its constellation, Canis Major (Greater Dog).[11] 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 it marked winter and was an important star for navigation around the Pacific Ocean.
Sirius, known in ancient Egypt as Sopdet (Greek: Sothis), is recorded in the earliest astronomical records. During the era of the Middle Kingdom, Egyptians based their calendar on the heliacal rising of Sirius, namely the day it becomes visible just before sunrise after moving far enough away from the glare of the Sun. This occurred just before the annual flooding of the Nile and the summer solstice,[17] after a 70-day absence from the skies.[18] The hieroglyph for Sothis features a star and a triangle. Sothis was identified with the great goddess Isis, who formed a part of a
trinity with her husband Osiris and their son Horus, while the 70-day period symbolised the passing of Isis and Osiris through the duat (Egyptian underworld).[18]
The ancient Greeks observed that the appearance of Sirius heralded the hot and dry summer, and feared that it caused plants to wilt, men to weaken, and women to become aroused.[19] Due to its brightness, Sirius would have been noted to twinkle more in the unsettled weather conditions of early summer. To Greek observers, this signified certain emanations which caused its malignant influence. People suffering its effects were said to be astroboletos (????????????) or "star-struck". It was described as "burning" or "flaming" in literature.[20] The season following the star's appearance came to be known as the Dog Days of summer.[21] The inhabitants of the island of Ceos in the Aegean Sea would offer sacrifices to Sirius and Zeus to bring cooling breezes, and would await the reappearance of the star in summer. If it rose clear, it would portend good fortune; if it was misty or faint then it foretold (or emanated) pestilence. Coins retrieved from the island from the 3rd century BC feature dogs or stars with emanating rays, highlighting Sirius' importance.[20] The Romans celebrated the heliacal setting of Sirius around April 25, sacrificing a dog, along with incense, wine, and a sheep, to the goddess Robigo so that the star's emanations would not cause wheat rust on wheat crops that year.[22]
Ptolemy of Alexandria mapped the stars in Books VII and VIII of his Almagest, in which he used Sirius as the location for the globe's central meridian. He curiously depicted it as one of six red-coloured stars (see the Red controversy section below). The other five are class M and K stars, such as Arcturus and Betelgeuse.[23]
Bright stars were important to the ancient Polynesians for navigation between the many islands and atolls of the Pacific Ocean. Low on the horizon, they acted as stellar compasses to assist mariners in charting courses to particular destinations. They also served as latitude markers; the declination of Sirius matches the latitude of the archipelago of Fiji at 17°S and thus passes directly over the islands each night.[24] Sirius served as the body of a "Great Bird" constellation called Manu, with Canopus as the southern wingtip and Procyon the northern wingtip, which divided the Polynesian night sky into two hemispheres.[25] Just as the appearance of Sirius in the morning sky marked summer in Greece, so it marked the chilly onset of winter for the M?ori, whose name Takurua described both the star and the season. Its culmination at the winter solstice was marked by celebration in Hawaii, where it was known as Ka'ulua, "Queen of Heaven". Many other Polynesian names have been recorded, including Tau-ua in the Marquesas Islands, Rehua in New Zealand, and Aa and Hoku-Kauopae in Hawaii.[26]
[edit] KinematicsIn 1718, Edmond Halley discovered the proper motion of the hitherto presumed "fixed" stars[27] after comparing contemporary astrometric measurements with those given in Ptolemy's Almagest. The bright stars Aldebaran, Arcturus and Sirius were noted to have moved significantly, the last of which having progressed 30 arc minutes (about the diameter of the moon) southwards in 1,800 years.[28]
In 1868, Sirius became the first star to have its velocity measured. Sir William Huggins examined the spectrum of this star and observed a noticeable red shift. He concluded that Sirius was receding from the Solar System at about 40 km/s.[29][30] Compared to the modern value of ?7.6 km/s,[2] this both was an overestimate and had the wrong sign; the minus means it is approaching the Sun. However, it is notable for introducing the study of celestial radial velocities.
[edit] Discovery of a companion
A simulated image of Sirius A and B using CelestiaIn 1844 German astronomer Friedrich Bessel deduced from changes in the proper motion of Sirius that it had an unseen companion.[31] Nearly two decades later, on January 31, 1862, American telescope-maker and astronomer Alvan Graham Clark first observed the faint companion, which is now called Sirius B, or affectionately "the Pup".[32] This happened during testing of a 18.5-inch (470 mm) aperture great refractor telescope for Dearborn Observatory, which was the largest refracting telescope lens in existence at the time, and the largest telescope in America.[33]
The visible star is now sometimes known as Sirius A. Since 1894, some apparent orbital irregularities in the Sirius system have been observed, suggesting a third very small companion star, but this has never been definitely confirmed. The best fit to the data indicates a six-year orbit around Sirius A and a mass of only 0.06 solar masses. This star would be five to ten magnitudes fainter than the white dwarf Sirius B, which would account for the difficulty of observing it.[34] Observations published in 2008 were unable to detect either a third star or a planet. An apparent "third star" observed in the 1920s is now confirmed as a background object.[35]
In 1915, Walter Sydney Adams, using a 60-inch (1.5 m) reflector at Mount Wilson Observatory, observed the spectrum of Sirius B and determined that it was a faint whitish star.[36] This led astronomers to conclude that it was a white dwarf, the second to be discovered.[37] The diameter of Sirius A was first measured by Robert Hanbury Brown and Richard Q. Twiss in 1959 at Jodrell Bank using their stellar intensity interferometer.[38] In 2005, using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers determined that Sirius B has nearly the diameter of the Earth, 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles), with a mass that is 98% of the Sun.[39][40][41][42]
[edit] Red controversyAround 150 AD, the Hellenistic astronomer Claudius Ptolemy described Sirius as reddish, along with five other stars, Betelgeuse, Antares, Aldebaran, Arcturus and Pollux, all of which are clearly of orange or red hue.[43] The discrepancy was first noted by amateur astronomer Thomas Barker, squire of Lyndon Hall in Rutland, who prepared a paper and spoke at a meeting of the Royal Society in London in 1760.[44] The existence of other stars changing in brightness gave credence to the idea that some may change in colour too; Sir John Herschel noted this in 1839, possibly influenced by witnessing Eta Carinae two years earlier.[45] Thomas Jefferson Jackson See resurrected discussion on red Sirius with the publication of several papers in 1892, and a final summary in 1926.[46] He cited not only Ptolemy but also the poet Aratus, the orator Cicero, and general Germanicus as colouring the star red, though acknowledging that none of the latter three authors were astronomers, the last two merely translating Aratus' poem Phaenomena.[47] Seneca, too, had described Sirius as being of a deeper red colour than Mars.[48] However, not all ancient observers saw Sirius as red. The 1st century AD poet Marcus Manilius described it as "sea-blue", as did the 4th century Avienus.[49] It is the standard star for the color white in ancient China, and multiple records from the 2nd century BC up to the 7th century AD all describe Sirius as white in hue.[50][51]
In 1985, German astronomers Wolfhard Schlosser and Werner Bergmann published an account of an 8th century Lombardic manuscript, which contains De cursu stellarum ratio by St. Gregory of Tours. The Latin text taught readers how to determine the times of nighttime prayers from positions of the stars, and Sirius is described within as rubeola — "reddish". The authors proposed this was further evidence Sirius B had been a red giant at the time.[52] However, other scholars replied that it was likely St. Gregory had been referring to Arcturus instead.[53][54]
The possibility that stellar evolution of either Sirius A or Sirius B could be responsible for this discrepancy has been rejected by astronomers on the grounds that the timescale of thousands of years is too short and that there is no sign of the nebulosity in the system that would be expected had such a change taken place.[48] An interaction with a third star, to date undiscovered, has also been proposed as a possibility for a red appearance.[55] Alternative explanations are either that the description as red is a poetic metaphor for ill fortune, or that the dramatic scintillations of the star when it was observed rising left the viewer with the impression that it was red. To the naked eye, it often appears to be flashing with red, white and blue hues when near the horizon.[48]
