"Sirius" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... It is reported, but we hope without foundation, that Saturn, and several other discontented planets, have accepted an invitation from Sirius to join his system, on the most liberal appointments. We believe the report to have originated in nothing more than the discovery of the annual parallax of Sirius from the orbit of Saturn; but we may safely assure our readers that no steps have as yet been ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... ocean, and we find the Scotia crossing in between eight and nine days, at a speed of 13 or 14 knots. In 1858 ten and a half to twelve and a half days was allowed for the passage between Liverpool and New York. So as we recede we finally arrive at the pioneer vessels, the Sirius and Great Western, crossing in fourteen to eighteen days at a speed of 6 to 8 knots. For these historical details an interesting paper may be consulted, "De Toenemende Grootte der Zee-Stoombooten," 1888, by Professor A. Huet, of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... then, are the men among whom Tolstoy belongs: which of these the greater, which of these the less? My friends, when we arrive at these, we are no longer among the measurable planets, but among the immeasurable fixed stars. Sirius flashes indeed with greater splendor than Vega, and Vega than Arcturus, and Arcturus than Capella, and Capella flashes with greater splendor than Aldebaran; but who shall undertake to say which of these suns is the greater, which is the less? ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... of much the same size and brilliance as our sun, we should be able roughly to calculate their distance from their faintness. We cannot do this, as they differ considerably in size and intrinsic brilliance. Sirius is more than twice the size of our sun and gives out twenty times as much light. Canopus emits 20,000 times as much light as the sun, but we cannot say, in this case, how much larger it is than the sun. Arcturus, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... abides a temperate air; And fruitful Venus' star contains the seeds Of all things. Ruler of the boundless deep The god (11) Cyllenian: whene'er he holds That part of heaven where the Lion dwells With neighbouring Cancer joined, and Sirius star Flames in its fury; where the circular path (Which marks the changes of the varying year) Gives to hot Cancer and to Capricorn Their several stations, under which doth lie The fount of Nile, he, master of the waves, Strikes with his beam the waters. Forth the stream Brims from his fount, as ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... discovered, in 1572, what appeared to be a new star in the constellation, Cassiopeia. It was a star of the first magnitude when first perceived, and daily it increased in brilliancy, till it out-shone Sirius, equaled Venus in lustre, and could be perceived, even by the naked eye, at noonday. For nearly a month the star shone; at first it had a white light, then a yellow, and finally it was a bright red. Then it slowly faded, and in about ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... the Stalk-fungi, 10,000 heavy-armed troops for close quarters; the explanation of their name is that their shields are mushrooms, and their spears asparagus stalks. Their neighbours were the Dog-acorns, Phaethon's contingent from Sirius. These were 5,000 in number, dog-faced men fighting on winged acorns. It was reported that Phaethon too was disappointed of the slingers whom he had summoned from the Milky Way, and of the Cloud-centaurs. These latter, however, arrived, most unfortunately for us, after the battle was decided; ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... stars exhibit changes of complexion in themselves. Sirius, as before stated, was once a ruddy, or rather a fiery-faced orb, but has now forgotten to blush, and looks down upon us with a pure, brilliant smile, in which there is no trace either of anger or of shame. On the countenances of others, still more varied traits have rippled, within ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... we pass to Canis Major (map No. 2). There is no hope of our being able to see the companion of alpha (Sirius), at present (1901), even with our five-inch. Discovered by Alvan Clark with an eighteen-inch telescope in 1862, when its distance was 10" from the center of Sirius, this ninth-magnitude star has since been swallowed up in the blaze of its ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... 750 indicated horse power, her registered tonnage being 1,300. She was intended to be the pioneer ship, and was ready for sea in April, 1838; but competition was as keen then as now, and the St. Georges Steam Packet Coy. started their s.s. Sirius, for the voyage to New York, from London, on the 29th March. She had a tonnage of 700 tons, and her engines were of 320 horse-power. She was elegantly fitted-up, and started with 22 passengers, whose number was increased at Cork, and, being intended solely for ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... comprise the group of the first magnitude, which include all the brightest stars visible, as Sirius, Canopus, Alpha, Arcturus, ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... black thing on the sea. The archer-goddess discharged a shaft with fatal aim. The waves rolled the dead body of Orion to the land, and bewailing her fatal error with many tears, Diana placed him among the stars, where he appears as a giant, with a girdle, sword, lion's skin, and club. Sirius, his dog, follows him, and the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... on every hill, And curls up the valleys at eve; but noon Is fullest of Spring; and at midnight the moon Gives her westering throne to Orion's bright zone, As he slopes o'er the darkened world's repose; And a lustre in eastern Sirius glows. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... six hundred years before the commencement of our era. Nor is this improbable, if the speculations of modern philosophers respecting the age of the world are entitled to respect. The Egyptians discovered, by the rising of Sirius, that the year consists of three hundred and sixty-five and one quarter days, and this was their sacred year, in distinction from the civil, which consisted of three hundred and sixty-five days. They also had observed the courses of the planets, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... is that man should have been able to rouse the horse from his immemorial sleep, to fix and direct his attention and to interest him in matters that are more foreign and indifferent to him than the variations of temperature in Sirius or Aldebaran are to us. It really seems, when we consider our preconceived ideas, that there is not in the animal an organic and insurmountable inability to do what man's brain does, a total and irremediable absence of intellectual ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... it as he watched the Six Flying Stars speed across the night sky—six glowing stars that moved in a direction opposite to the march of the other stars. Bright as Sirius seen from Earth, strung out one behind the other like jewels on a velvet string, ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of Sirius (alpha in Canis Maior) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles) distant and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: of Arcturus: of the precession of equinoxes: of Orion with belt and sextuple sun theta and nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could be contained: of moribund and of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... before the Royal Institution in 1838, "proving" that steamers could never cross the Atlantic, because they could not carry sufficient coal to raise steam enough during the voyage. But this theory was also tested by experience in the same year, when the Sirius, of London, left Cork for New York, and made the passage in nineteen days. Four days after the departure of the Sirius, the Great Western left Bristol for New York, and made the passage in thirteen days five hours.[1] The problem was solved; and ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... a million times bigger than the earth; Sirius is twelve times the size of the sun; comets ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... astronomical staff. There are to be found assembled all the most eminent men of science. Here is to be seen at work that powerful telescope which enabled Bond to resolve the nebula of Andromeda, and Clarke to discover the satellite of Sirius. This celebrated institution fully justified on all points the confidence reposed in it by the Gun Club. So, after two days, the reply so impatiently awaited was placed in the ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... would visit the Observatory with me some evening, and look at Sirius. Did you ever make the acquaintance of a fixed star? I believe astronomers reckon about twenty millions of them in sight, and an infinite possibility of invisible millions, each one of which is a sun, like ours, and may have satellites like our planet. Suppose you see one of these fixed stars suddenly ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... first day of April of the year of our Lord, 1962, Francis Farnsworth Pfleuger brought into being a Moebius coincidence field and established multiple contact with the twenty-first satellite of the star Sirius, thereby giving the people of Valleyview access, via their back doorways, to a New World. Here we have come to live. Here we have come to raise our children. Here, in this idyllic village, which the noble ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... the patch of sky where her son had passed in his shining metal sarcophagus. Sirius blossomed there, blue-white and beautiful. She raised her eyes still higher—and beheld the vast parterre of Orion with its central motif of vivid forget-me-nots, its far-flung blooms of Betelguese and Rigel, ...
— Star Mother • Robert F. Young
... that the great star Sirius, the brightest in the heavens, is about six times as far off as alpha Centauri. His probable diameter is twelve million miles, and the light he emits two hundred times more brilliant than that of the sun. Yet, even through ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Yet, notwithstanding this immense size, our sun is quite a small body as compared with some of the fixed stars, which, as perhaps you may know, are really suns at an inconceivable distance from us. The bright star Sirius, which is visible during our winter time, is not only very much brighter in reality than our sun, but must be many times larger; and there are others known to be very much larger than Sirius. It ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... interwoven that it was not possible to cut one. The carpenters were cutting a keel for the boat. The crew fishing and making nets. This evening there was a cry that a ship's light was seen in the offing, which produced a considerable sensation for the moment; but it turned out to be only Sirius rising. ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall
... 2. Sirius. This comparison, among many others, shows how constantly the poet's attention was directed to the ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... swing of some of the comets), is insignificant compared to the distances of the stars. One of the nearest stars to the earth that we know of is Alpha Centauri, estimated to be some twenty-five million millions of miles away. Sirius, the brightest star in the firmament, is double this distance ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... own fixed centre. Naturally, we know more about our own solar system than about any other in our own universe, and it also possesses for us a greater practical and personal interest than any outside portion of the galaxy. Nobody can pretend to be profoundly immersed in the internal affairs of Sirius or of Alpha Centauri. A fiery revolution in the belt of Orion would affect us less than a passing finger-ache in a certain single terrestrial baby of our own household. Therefore I shall not apologise in any way for leaving the remainder ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... in the solar system had one genesis, and were part of the same nebulous mass. But this does not include the other systems and nebulae; for, compared with them, our sun, as we have seen, is itself advanced and small beside such stars as Sirius having diameters ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... the double, triple, and quadruple stars, those which, though single to the naked eye, when viewed by the help of the glass showed that they were two, three, or four, perfectly separate. Then the various colours were studied, and diamond-like Sirius was viewed, as well as his ruby, topaz, sapphire, and emerald companions in the great sphere. The moon was journeyed over at every opportunity, with her silvery, pumice-like craters, and greyish-bottomed ring-plains, surrounded by their mighty walls of twelve to seventeen thousand ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... you, brother author. I have told Mrs. Goodyer to place them in your room. Amongst those papers is a sort of journal,—a woman's journal; it moved me greatly. A man gets into another world, strange to him as the orb of Sirius, if he can transport himself into the centre of a woman's heart, and see the life there, so wholly unlike our own. Things of moment to us, to it so trivial; things trifling to us, to it so vast. There was this journal, in its dates reminding me of stormy events in my own existence, and grand ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... grew, and Lance kept his head tilted backward. Alpha Centauri, the most popular target, was not visible at this latitude; and Barnard's star, besides being far too faint, lay on the other side of the sun. But there shone Sirius, just as bright as it had glittered for the Greeks, and frosty Procyon, a little to the north. Both orbs twinkled and beckoned, ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... their serene spaces; like Eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man! Thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed-up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them any more; and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw! what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth; what art thou that sittest whining ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... enthusiasm. Meetings of Esperantists are invariably characterized by great cordiality and good-fellowship, and at the international congresses so far these feelings have at times risen to fever heat. It is easy to make fun of this by saying that the conjunction of Sirius, the fever-shedding constellation of the ancients, with the green star[1] in the dog days of August, when the congresses are held, induces hot fits. Those who have drunk enthusiastic toasts in common, and have rubbed shoulders and compared notes with various foreigners, and ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... said Morey. "We can—and we can move faster than your ship, if not faster than they. The people of the dead star have moved to a very live star—Sirius, the brightest in our heavens. And they are as much alive now as their new sun. They can move faster than light, also. We had a little misunderstanding a while back, when their star passed close to ours. They came off second ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... or isolated spheroidal bodies. The cluster of stars, to which our cosmical island belongs, forms a lens-shaped, flattened stratum, detached on every side, whose major axis is estimated at seven or eight hundred, and its minor one at a hundred and fifty times the distance of Sirius. It would appear, on the supposition that the parallax of Sirius is not greater than that accurately determined for the brightest star in the Centaur (0".9128), that light traverses one distance of Sirius in three years, while it also follows, from Bessel's earlier ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Sirius and Betel do not at once perceive that one shines with a brilliant white light and the other burns with a glowing red, as different in their brilliancy as the precious stones on a lapidary's table, perhaps for the same reason. And so there is an endless variety of tints ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... the Pleiades or the Big Dipper—no, get me Canis Major—'where Sirius, brightest jewel in the diadem of the firmament, holds sway'," she quoted. "There! Thought I'd forgotten all the astronomy you ever taught me, didn't you? Think ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... and Latin cura have nothing to do with each other, he is nevertheless no more indulging in guess-work than the astronomer who confesses his ignorance as to the habitability of Venus while asserting his knowledge of the existence of hydrogen in the atmosphere of Sirius. To cite one example out of a hundred, every philologist knows that s may become r, and that the broad a-sound may dwindle into the closer o-sound; but when you adduce some plausible etymology based on the assumption that r has changed into s, or o into a, apart from the ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... night, and try to count the stars. If your station lies well beyond the glare of cities, which is often strong enough to conceal all but the brighter objects, you will find the task a difficult one. Ranging through the six magnitudes of the Greek astronomers, from the brilliant Sirius to the faintest perceptible points of light, the stars are scattered in great profusion over the celestial vault. Their number seems limitless, yet actual count will show that the eye has been deceived. In a survey of the entire ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... a puddle in the street reflecting green Sirius; In thick dark groves trees huddle lifting their branches like beckoning hands. We eat the grain, the grain is death, all goes back to the earth's dark mass, All but a song which moves across the plain like ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... Milky Way. Through his perma-glas canopy, he could see it trailing across the black velvet of space like a white bridal veil. Below his SC9B scout-ship stretched the red dust deserts of Sirius Three illuminated by the thin light of two ice moons. He looked at ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks
... before. In this civilized world, you didn't. He knew if he thought about Briscoe, he'd start bawling like a baby, so he swallowed hard a couple of times, set his chin, and concentrated on the trip to Procyon Alpha. That meant this ship was outbound on the Aldebaran run—Proxima Centauri, Sirius, ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... Sirius, brightest of all stars—not our own chill and spectral planet rushing toward Vega in the constellation of Lyra—presided at the birth of millions born ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... night, it is no longer night. Casseopeia's Chair and Orion were being tossed about the burning heavens like golden furniture out of a house on fire; and one great star-jewel had fallen on the apex of cruel Khufu's Pyramid. I should have liked to believe it was Sirius, the "lucky" star sacred to Isis and Hathor; but Monny's schoolgirl knowledge of astronomy bereft me of that innocent pleasure. No wonder that the ancient Egyptians, with such jewels in their blue treasure-house, were famous astrologers and ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... radio and other investigators who have been uncovering secrets of upper-air electricity. But the interior of the earth is still one of the great mysteries. It is a paradox of astronomy that much more is known about the center of the sun or a star like Sirius than about the center ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... hot season in the skies. Sirius held the ascendant, and under his influence even the radiant band of the Celestials began to droop, while the great ball-room of Olympus grew gradually more and more deserted. For nearly a week ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... ominous when, in 1838, the Admiralty had requested proposals for a steam service to America. This demand was prompted by the voyages of the Sirius and Great Western, wooden-hulled sidewheelers which thrashed along at ten knots' speed and crossed the Atlantic in fourteen to seventeen days. This was a much faster rate than the average time of the Yankee packets, but America was unperturbed ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... of the surcharged lily Beneath the buffets of the surly storm, Or the soft petals of the daffodilly, When Sirius is uncomfortably warm, So drooped his head upon his manly form, While floated in the breeze his tresses brown. He hung the stated time, and then ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... consumption of coal was very heavy; and we know that, having regard to the then consumption, it was said, on high authority, it would be impossible for a steamboat to traverse the Atlantic, as it could not carry fuel enough to take it across; and indeed it was not until 1838 that the Sirius and the Great Western did make the passage. The passage had been made before, but it was not until 1838 that the passenger service can be said to have commenced. In 1831, the marine boiler was supplied with salt water, the hulls were invariably ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... The Solar Theory of the Fire-festivals, pp. 331-341.—Theory that the fire-festivals are charms to ensure a supply of sunshine, 331; coincidence of two of the festivals with the solstices, 331 sq.; attempt of the Bushmen to warm up the fire of Sirius in midwinter by kindling sticks, 332 sq.; the burning wheels and discs of the fire-festivals may be direct imitations of the sun, 334; the wheel which is sometimes used to kindle the fire by friction may also be an imitation of the sun, 334-336; the influence ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... preached to you, Rachel," said he, as he lay back on his chair, "that all these things were fixed ere Sirius was born? Yea," he added, as a smile played amid the seriousness of his face, "ere yet there was a space for the dog-star to wag his tail. The croppings out will now come thick, and you will know whether you are to be a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... picked it out, but he knew when he'd found it. He fixed his eyes on it. It was a very white star, and for a space of minutes it seemed in no wise different from its fellows. But it grew brighter. Presently it was very bright. It was brighter than Sirius. In seconds more it was brighter than Venus. It increased more and more rapidly in its brilliance. It became the brightest object in all the heavens except the crescent moon, and the cold intensity of its light ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... self-luminous body.] Luminary. — N. luminary; light &c. 420; flame &c. (fire) 382. spark, scintilla; phosphorescence, fluorescence. sun, orb of day, Phoebus, Apollo[obs3], Aurora; star, orb; meteor, falling star, shooting star; blazing star, dog star, Sirius; canicula, Aldebaran[obs3]; constellation, galaxy; zodiacal light; anthelion[obs3]; day star, morning star; Lucifer; mock sun, parhelion; phosphor, phosphorus; sun dog|!; Venus. aurora, polar lights; northern lights, aurora borealis; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... not until the 6th of June, 1789, that Phillip resumed his labours in the field of exploration. The Sirius had then returned from the Cape of Good Hope, and he could reckon on the assistance of his friend, Captain Hunter, to re-investigate Broken Bay with the vessel's boats. Accordingly, two boats were sent on to Broken Bay with provisions, where they were joined by the Governor and his party, who had ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... when he arrived for his winter visit to the sky, that he came as an old friend, and was waiting like us for the wretched war to end. On that September night, when the hours were beginning to draw towards dawn, it gave me great pleasure to see him hanging in the East, while Sirius with undiminished courage merrily twinkled above the smoke-fringed horizon and told us of the eternal quietness ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... hopes, and desolation spreads Through all the unpeopled kennel unrestrained. More fatal than the envenomed viper's bite; Or that Apulian[10] spider's poisonous sting, Healed by the pleasing antidote of sounds. When Sirius reigns, and the sun's parching beams Bake the dry gaping surface, visit thou Each even and morn, with quick observant eye, Thy panting pack. If in dark sullen mood, The gloating hound refuse his wonted meal, 200 Retiring to some close, obscure retreat, Gloomy, disconsolate: ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... "And Sirius and the Bull and the River," added Gladys. "It's just like getting a peep at the actors in their dressing-rooms before it is time for them to come out on the stage, to see the ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... our best to eat up the abbe's dinner, but could not. People from Sirius might, but it was too ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... Sirius is the brightest; but twenty thousand millions of such stars would be required to transmit to the earth a light equal to that of the sun. And if it were difficult to ascertain the nature and quality of the sun, it would appear to be ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... faint ray from Sirius rising, When through space first was hurled The primal gloom of ancient voids surprising, ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... been said" writes Walter Bagehot, [Footnote: On the Emotion of Conviction, Literary Studies, Vol. Ill, p. 172.] "that if you can only get a middleclass Englishman to think whether there are 'snails in Sirius,' he will soon have an opinion on it. It will be difficult to make him think, but if he does think, he cannot rest in a negative, he will come to some decision. And on any ordinary topic, of course, it is so. A grocer has a full creed ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... being heckled, and conciliates his opponents by that bright pugnacity which a true Briton loves better than anything else in politics. I appreciate, too, the compliment he pays me. But I wish he would not choose to put his ardour in competition with Sirius and the dog-days; and I heartily wish he had not brought down Mr. Blank, M.P., to address ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... which begun To warm us so when thou wert here, Now scorches like the raging sun, When Sirius does first appear. Oh, fix this flame! and let despair Redeem the rest from ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... life of ecstasy which suspends material perceptions and precipitates the whole soul on a single point. He contemplated, not that girl, but that light which wore a satin pelisse and a velvet bonnet. The star Sirius might have entered the room, and he would not ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... conversationally. "Naturally it would, seeing we're so far away from there. But I never get tired of looking at it, and trying to see if I can figure out some of the brighter suns." He pointed to one bright star directly overhead. "That's Sirius, I know. It's always directly ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... south, we see a brilliant array of stars, Sirius unmistakeably overshining the rest. Orion is shining in full glory, his leading brilliant, Betelgeuse[2] being almost exactly on the meridian, and also almost exactly half way between the horizon and the zenith. In Plate 2 is given a map of this ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... infinitely outshone the merits of his countryman. Our author was undoubtedly possessed of that power which they wanted, and was cautious not to indulge too far the sallies of a lively imagination. Omitting, therefore, any mention of sultry Sirius, sylvan shade, sequestered glade, verdant hills, purling rills, mossy mountains, gurgling fountains, &c., he simply tells us that it was "All on a summer's day". For my own part I confess that I find ...
— English Satires • Various
... spectral lines towards the red end of the spectrum was definitely established by Adams in 1924, by observations on the dense companion of Sirius, for which the effect is about thirty times greater than for the Sun. ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... and preparation of awakening spring—very faint—whether in the earth or roots, or starting of insects, I know not—but it was audible, as I lean'd on a rail (I am down in my country quarters awhile,) and look'd long at the western horizon. Turning to the east, Sirius, as the shadows deepen'd, came forth in dazzling splendor. And great Orion; and a little to the north-east the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... non-existence; but this is no reason for professing a solemn uncertainty as to its existence. We cannot prove that each time a cab drives down Regent Street a stick of barley-sugar is not created in Sirius. But we do not proclaim, to the world our eternal ignorance as to whether or no this is so. Why then should our positivists treat in this way the alleged immaterial part of consciousness? Why this emphatic protestation ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... the wilderness; and there, almost directly above him and very bright, the North Star, the hunter's compass. Then, there was the Big Dipper, very high, and the Little Bear. Southerly, through the trees, and looking like an arc-lamp suspended there, Sirius gleamed, while very low and to the left was the belt ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Sunday, when no cooling breeze Was borne on zephyr's wing, to fan the trees; One sultry Sunday, when the torrid ray O'er nature beam'd intolerable day; When raging Sirius warn'd us not to roam, And Galen's sons prescrib'd cool draughts at home; One sultry Sunday, near those fields of fame Where weavers dwell, and Spital is their name, A sober wight, of reputation high For tints that emulate the Tyrian dye, Wishing to take his afternoon's ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... bodies, indeed altogether terrestrial, one feels, naturally, rounder in his orbit, and a little more likely to see stars, after such a dinner as this, than before. Do I not, indeed, see around me now, all the stars of the intellectual firmament? Are not SIRIUS and ARCTURUS here, in their glory, as well as ORION and the rest? As my old friend CRISPIN would say, their name is legion! I would blaze, gentlemen, too, if possible, in honor of the occasion; but, as I can't Comet, meteors fall in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... "That means we're within two light years of Sirius, since we were headed in that direction. Let's turn the ship so we can take a look ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... Sirius, far in the deeps of space, beyond the flight of a cannon-ball flying for a billion years, beyond the range of unaided vision, blazes the star that is our Utopia's sun. To those who know where to look, with a good opera-glass ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... "Sirius is my love, and I am his, O son of Arrius. We have been comrades for twenty years—in tent, in battle, in all stages of the desert we have been comrades. I ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... clear crystal roof of his jet boat. He breathed as lightly as he could, taking short, slight breaths, holding them as long as he could and then exhaling only when his lungs felt as if they would burst. He could see Regulus overhead, and Sirius, the two great stars shining brilliantly in the absolute blackness of space. He raised himself slowly on one elbow and looked at the oxygen indicator. He saw that the needle had dropped past the empty ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... Maury, of Liverpool, said that on the first voyage of the Sirius steamship to America, only five letters were received at the post-office to go by her, while at least 10,000 were sent in a bag from the consignee ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... motion clung The shadow of his sister, as the beam Of the East, that played upon them, made them glance Like those three stars of the airy Giant's zone, That glitter burnished by the frosty dark; And as the fiery Sirius alters hue, And bickers into red and emerald, shone Their morions, washed with ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... omitted] by reason of their vigor and florid manner of growing; for to blossom and flourish after an extraordinary manner is by the poets expressed by the word [Greek omitted]. In this sense, Antimachus calls the city of Cadmeans flourishing with fruit; and Aratus, speaking of the dog-star Sirius, says that he ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... twitter and tweet, And away they swarm 'neath the Dragon's feet, With a whoop and a flutter they swing and sway, And surge pell-mell down the Milky Way. Betwixt the legs of the glittering Chair They hover and squeak in the empty air. Then round they swoop past the glimmering Lion To where Sirius barks behind huge Orion; Up, then, and over to wheel amain, Under the silver, and ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... Vence, "I shall not say like Renan, my beloved master: 'What does Sirius care?' because somebody would reply with reason 'What does little Earth care for big Sirius?' But I am always surprised when people who are adult, and even old, let themselves be deluded by the illusion of power, as if hunger, love, and death, all the ignoble or sublime necessities ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... By Jove, wasn't it splendid, coming back in the moonlight with that silver lane flickering on the water in front of us? We were so completely alone. We might have been up in the interstellar spaces, you and I, travelling from Sirius to Arcturus in one of those profound gulfs of the void which Hardy talks about. ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... arch This music sounded like a march, And with its chorus seemed to be Preluding some great tragedy. Sirius was rising in the east; And, slow ascending one by one, The kindling constellations shone. Begirt with many a blazing star, Stood the great giant, Algebar, Orion, hunter of the beast! His sword hung gleaming by his side, And, on his arm, the lion's hide Scattered ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... glad had my cloak not been lost near Jericho. The temperature differed greatly from that of the Dead Sea—a keen wind was in keeping with the end of December. The stars were most brilliant: Venus richly lustrous; Sirius, dazzling; and the huge Orion showing to best advantage. The road was alternately rough in the valley, or over slippery ledges. At length, however, we got cheered by coming to known objects. Passed Beer Eyoob, (En Rogel,) and saw the battlemented ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... like a real scientist—but by just having them close around. I even got to know some of their buzzing talk. Maybe I'll have to be their ambassador to human folks, sometime. They are from the planets of the stars, Frank. Sirius, I think. Tough little spores can be ejected from one atmosphere, and drift in space for millions of years... They arrived after the first Martians were extinct. Now that you're here, Frank, I wish you'd stay. But that's no good. Somebody lost ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... anything more. I swear to you, Sir, I believe that these two centres of civilization are just exactly the two points that close the circuit in the battery of our planetary intelligence! And I believe there are spiritual eyes looking out from Uranus and unseen Neptune,—ay, Sir, from the systems of Sirius and Arcturus and Aldebaran, and as far as that faint stain of sprinkled worlds confluent in the distance that we call the nebula of Orion,—looking on, Sir, with what organs I know not, to see which are going to melt in that fiery fusion, the accidents ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... celebrated Dutch astronomer, returning one evening from his laboratory to his dwellinghouse, was surprised to find a group of country people gazing at a star which he was sure did not exist half an hour before. This was the star in question. It was then as bright as Sirius, and continued to increase till it surpassed Jupiter when brightest, and was visible at midday. It began to diminish in December of the same year, and in March ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... marriages promote, Give laws, and dwellings I divide by lot; When rising vapors choke the wholesome air, And blasts of noisome winds corrupt the year; The trees devouring caterpillars burn; Parch'd was the grass, and blighted was the corn: Nor 'scape the beasts; for Sirius, from on high, With pestilential heat infects the sky: My men- some fall, the rest in fevers fry. Again my father bids me seek the shore Of sacred Delos, and the god implore, To learn what end of woes we might expect, And to what clime ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... at an early period, observed that the rising of the Nile coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius, the Dog-star, and hence they very plausibly referred it to celestial agencies. Men are ever prone to mistake coincidences for causes; and thus it came to pass that the appearance of that star on the horizon ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... comet die, The brood of blazing Sirius fly: God's orb shall quench their sultry heats And drive them from their ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... of gold should sultry SIRIUS glare, And with his kindling tresses scorch the air; With points of flame the shafts of Summer arm, 500 And burn the beauties he designs to warm;— —So erst when JOVE his oath extorted mourn'd, And clad in glory to the Fair return'd; While Loves ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... during the night of April 22d, under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes. Six obsolete British cruisers took part in the expedition. These were the Brilliant, Iphigenia, Sirius, Intrepid, Thetis and Vindictive. The Vindictive carried storming parties to destroy the stone mole at Zeebrugge; the remaining five cruisers were filled with concrete, and it was intended that they should be sunk in the entrances ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... telescopes," says Humboldt, "the contemplation of these nebulous masses leads us into regions from whence a ray of light, according to an assumption not wholly improbable, requires millions of years to reach our earth—to distances for whose measurement the dimensions (the distance of Sirius, or the calculated distances of the binary stars in Cygnus and the Centaur) of our nearest stratum of fixed stars ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... interest should be shared by all the world. Do not imagine that his is a loving heart that feels a necessity of spending itself on others. He likes to make his emotions spectacular, and as his impressions are events for him, he would like to display them, even to the inhabitants of Sirius. His soul is like a lake swept by a gale of wind that would drive a man-of-war at the rate of twenty-five knots an hour; and on this lake Stephane sails his squadrons of nutshells, and he sees them come, go, tack, run around, ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... I'm going to tell you," said Drake Hawkins, pinching Zoe's rosy cheek. "Now: two thousand and eleven years ago in 1985, figuring by the earthly calendar of that time, a tribe of beings from the Dog-star Sirius invaded the earth." ...
— The Mathematicians • Arthur Feldman
... underside of the mantel-shelf was flushed with the high-coloured light, and the legs of the table nearest the fire. Tess's face and neck reflected the same warmth, which each gem turned into an Aldebaran or a Sirius—a constellation of white, red, and green flashes, that interchanged their hues ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... astronomy is in photographing the spectra of the stars. The first photograph showing the lines in a stellar spectrum was obtained by Dr. Henry Draper, of New York, in 1872. Sir William Huggins in 1863 had obtained an image of the spectrum of Sirius, on a photographic plate, but no lines were visible in it. In 1876 he again took up the subject, and, by an early publication, preceded Dr. Draper. When we consider the attention the photography of stellar spectra is receiving at the present time, ...
— The Future of Astronomy • Edward C. Pickering
... their getaway in the lifeboat, which they aptly call "Forlorn Hope," and finally make a safe landing on Ganymede, where Stevens plans to build a power-plant and a radio transmitter, to enable him to communicate with the earth or with the IPV Sirius, which is used by Westfall and Brandon (two of the world's best scientists) as ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... America by steam, Dr. Lardner delivered a lecture before the Royal Society "proving" that steamers could never cross the Atlantic, because they could not carry coal enough to produce steam during the whole voyage. The passage of the steamship Sirius, which crossed in nineteen days, was fatal to Lardner's theory. When it was proposed to build a vessel of iron, many persons said: "Iron sinks—only wood can float:" but experiments proved that the miracle of the prophet ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... mysterious pebbles which the sea washes to the foot of the rock called Huntly Nabb, at the mouth of the Tees, and which if broken are found to contain a serpent. That serpent is my love—a love which is all-powerful, for it has brought you to me. An impossible distance was between us. I was in Sirius, and you were in Allioth. You have crossed the immeasurable space, and here you are. 'Tis well. Be ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... whole group of sun, primary and secondary planets quite behind us in our flight, as a bird might leave its bush and sweep into the whole forest. Now what do you see, Lady Constantine?' He levelled the achromatic at Sirius. ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... degree of inaccuracy. And many other phenomena were capable of prediction by accumulated experience. A gap between Mars and Jupiter caused a missing planet to be suspected and looked for, and to be found in a hundred pieces. The abnormal proper-motion of Sirius suggested to Bessel the existence of an unseen companion. And these last instances seem to approach very near the same class of prediction as that of the discovery of Neptune. Wherein, then, lies the difference? ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... with grey shadow, out of which none return. To them I hold out a hand of greeting in the spirit. Perhaps, when the Great Cycle has been traversed, we may meet again. Perhaps in another Argo we may voyage from Sirius to Mazaroth, through seas of golden ether adventurers from world to world instead of from continent ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... supposed divine nature of the heavenly bodies their motions determined the periodical religious festivals. As instances of the one we have the observation of the Egyptians, that the rising of the Nile corresponded with the heliacal rising of Sirius; the directions given by Hesiod for reaping and ploughing, according to the positions of the Pleiades; and his maxim that "fifty days after the turning of the sun is a seasonable time for beginning a voyage." As instances of the other, we have the naming of the days after the sun, moon, and planets; ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... us huddled together, helpless with mirth, while Berry, calling upon Sirius, clung desperately to the bookcase, and Nobby, clearly interpreting our merriment as applause, stood immediately below his victim, panting a little with excitement and wagging ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... magnitude star, which may be well seen in the winter evenings above Orion, had been found to move in an exceedingly small orbit, one too small to be detected except through the most refined observations of modern precision. The same thing had been found in the case of Sirius, and had been traced to the action of a minute companion revolving around it, which was discovered by the Clarks a dozen years before. There could be no doubt that the motion of Procyon was due to the same cause, but no one had ever seen the planet that ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... We moved out beyond Centaurus, and Sirius, and then we met the Jeks, the Nosurwey, the Lud. We tried Terrestrial know-how, we tried Production Miracles, we tried patriotism, we tried damning the torpedoes and full speed ahead ... and we were smashed back like mayflies in the wind. We died in droves, ...
— The Stoker and the Stars • Algirdas Jonas Budrys (AKA John A. Sentry)
... UP, UP!"—Mr. Punch with Time visits the Heavenly Bodies. Special Stars engaged for Christmas Entertainment. Look out for Mr. Punch's Christmas Number, entitled Punch Among the Planets. For once Toby will be Sirius. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... pleasure pass'd: at noon of day The sun with sultry beams began to play: Not Sirius shoots a fiercer flame from high, When with his poisonous breath he blasts the sky: Then droop'd the fading flowers (their beauty fled) And closed their sickly eyes, and hung the head; And rivell'd up with heat, lay dying in their bed. The ladies gasp'd, and scarcely ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... scarcely ever has there been an illustrious man who has not been appreciated, comforted, and inspired in secret by some woman long before he became famous, circling around him with her unselfish ministrations, like that star which is the invisible companion of Sirius. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... round the fire. Officers and privates press together for warmth. Other stragglers arrive, and sit at the backs of the first. With the progress of the night the stars come out in unusual brilliancy, Sirius and those in Orion flashing like stilettos; and the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... which my brother Sun sends over. Perhaps thou wouldst like to go back to the Dog Star, whence thou camest. There thou hadst work enough and to spare, for thou wast servant to Prince Canis, and he is a hard master." And I tipped the mirror, so that we could see Sirius (which is the name of that star,) and what was going on in it. There sat Prince Canis on his throne, richly dressed. Hundreds of servants bowed before him, or hurried hither and thither to do his bidding. He spoke harshly to them, and flourished a huge whip, which ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... Voltairism of its particular class than, "Il faut bien citer ce qu'on ne comprend point du tout, dans la langue qu'on entend le moins." But, as so often happens, the cracker in the tail is here the principal point. Micromegas, the native of Sirius, who may be Voltaire himself, or anybody else—after his joint tour through the universes (much more amusing than that of the late Mr. Bailey's Festus), with the smaller but still gigantic Saturnian—writes ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... qualms of political conscience, but for the fact that earthly politics, social theories, and social instincts were less to him now than to an inhabitant of the dark body that tumbles and fumbles around Sirius. Less than the difference between the minnow and the roach to the ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Taurus, she had overborne the benignant sway of Aldebaran, and was pressing hard on Castor and Pollux (in the House of Gemini). Also, her horizontal attitude was so full of menace that Rigel and Betelgeux (in Orion) seemed to wilt under her sinister supremacy. Sirius (in Canis Major), strongest and most malevolent of the astral powers, hung southwest of the zenith, reinforcing the evil bias of the time, and thus, from his commanding position, overruling the guardianship of Canopus (in Argo), south-west of the same point. Lower still, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... simply "[Greek: os gar ameinon]." That is like Homer. The stars continue their signals. Vintage time is when Orion and Sirius are come to mid-heaven, and ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... earth, and send it on a mission of research among other worlds. Let it soar far away to where the dog-star, Sirius, holds its course; and then, though nineteen billion two hundred million miles from earth, a distance so great, that light, travelling, as it does, at the rate of six million six hundred and twenty thousand miles a minute, would require three years to pass it,—even ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... thing, Algernon Weaver decided, actually to travel in space. When you read about it, or thought about it in terms of what you read, it was more a business of going from one name to another. Algol to Sirius. Aldebaran to Epsilon Ceti. You read the names, and the descriptions that went with them, and the whole thing—although breathtaking in concept, of course, when you really stopped to meditate on it—became rather ordinary and ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... that hung out moon and stars, the youth glanced around the darkening horizon and presently observed a tiny light far to the south. He stared at it quite surprised, and then he chanced to see a star just above it. It was the reflection of Sirius ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... war may be of interest at this time. Some one has called attention to the illuminating discourse between Micromegas, gigantic dweller on one of the planets revolving about Sirius, and a company of our philosophers, as reported in the seventh chapter of the amusing fantasy bearing the name of the above-mentioned Sirian visitor. A free translation of a part of this conversation is here offered. After congratulating his terrestrial hearers on being ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... was the lamp of Sirius And dim was the Milky Way. Oh far was the floor of Paradise From the soil where the soldier lay. Oh chill and stark was the crimson dark Where huddled men lay deep; His comrades all denied his call— Long had they lain ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... my unprotected flesh? How shall I walk on the air, sink through the earth, pass through stone walls, or walk, dry-shod, on the floor of the ocean? How shall I visit the other side of the moon, jump through the ring of Saturn, and gather sunflowers in Sirius? There are persons now living who profess to do no less remarkable feats, and to regard them as incidental merely to achievements far more important. A school of hierophants or adepts is said to exist in Tibet, who, as a matter of daily routine, quite transcend everything that we ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... night landscape should be rendered by careful exclusion of tints from the word-palette. The art of the etcher is more needed than that of the painter.) Heaven overhead is set with stars, shooting intensely, smouldering with dull red in Aldeboran, sparkling diamond-like in Sirius, changing from orange to crimson and green in the swart fire of yonder double star. On the snow this moonlight falls tenderly, not in hard white light and strong black shadow, but in tones of cream and ivory, rounding the curves of drift. The ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... variance with natural laws, that it loses in interest in a direct ratio with the violence it does to our feelings. Nor is the mode of conveyance imagined by Voltaire less incongruous than that of Swift. When Micromegas, ah inhabitant of Sirius, whose adventures were evidently suggested by those of Gulliver, accompanied by an inhabitant of Saturn, leaves the latter planet, they are, in the first place, made to leap upon the Ring of Saturn, which they find tolerably flat, "comme l'a fort bien devine un illustre habitant de ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... drew near to the Enemy, HIS LORDSHIP, accompanied by Captain HARDY, and the Captains of the four frigates (Euryalus, Naiad, Sirius, and Phoebe) who had been called on board by signal to receive instructions, visited the different decks of the ship. He addressed the crew at their several quarters, admonishing them against firing a single shot ...
— The Death of Lord Nelson • William Beatty
... be victorious in the end. Matter and spirit will then be one at last in glorious harmony, and the reign of freedom will begin on earth. But this can only come to pass by slow degrees, when after countless eons the moon and earth and shining Sirius himself shall fall to dust. Until that hour, oh, horror! horror! horror! [A pause. Two glowing red points are seen shining across the lake] Satan, my mighty foe, advances; I see his dread ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... than any of our feeble ogles; if I have ever committed these or any other impertinences, it was only to retire beaten and discomfited, and to confess that masculine philosophy, while it soars beyond Sirius and the ring of Saturn, stops short at the steel periphery ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... there have been, when one of the most gifted of mortals from that spot looked out upon the heavens, and in thought went forth on voyages of discovery into the distant regions of the universe! At the calm, still hour of midnight, Sirius watching over the city of sleepers, Jupiter carrying his brilliant lamp along his ancient pathway, every one of the luminaries in the place appointed by Him who calleth them all by their names—there stood the thoughtful man, with his reflecting ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... parabolic curve. That space is filled with isolated atoms or planetary dust, is rendered very probable by a fact discovered by Struve, that there is a gradual extinction in the light of the stars, amounting to a loss of 1/107 of the whole, in the distance which separates Sirius from the sun. According to Struve, this can be accounted for, "by admitting as very probable that space is filled with an ether, capable of intercepting in some degree the light." Is it not as probable that this extinction is due to ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... several of the brightest of the fixed stars have been estimated. Amongst others, Vega in the constellation Lyra is 100 millions of millions of miles away; Sirius in Canis Major, 123 millions of millions; the Pole-star, 282 millions of millions; and Capella, 340 millions of millions of miles, a figure represented by no ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... million times as far from us as the sun. If we take the distance of Sirius from the earth and subdivide it into one million equal parts, each of these parts would be long enough to span the great distance of 92,700,000 miles from the earth to the sun,' yet Sirius is one of the NEAREST of the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... of this once all darksome spot Where now their glad course mortals run, First-born of Sirius begot Upon the focus of the Sun— I'll call thee ——! for such thy earthly name— 15 What name so high, but what too low must be? Comets, when most they drink the solar flame Are but faint types and images of thee! Burn madly, Fire! o'er earth in ravage run, Then blush ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 1838 that the problem was solved. On April 23d of that year a most significant event took place. Two steamships dropped anchor in the harbor of New York, the Sirius and the Great Western. Both of these had made the entire voyage under steam, the Sirius, in eighteen and a half and the Great Western in fourteen and a half days, measuring from Queenstown. The Sirius ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... the piercing power and sultry heat of the sun abate, and almighty Zeus sends the autumn rains [1312], and men's flesh comes to feel far easier,—for then the star Sirius passes over the heads of men, who are born to misery, only a little while by day and takes greater share of night,—then, when it showers its leaves to the ground and stops sprouting, the wood you cut with your axe is least liable to worm. Then ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... had been throughout a signal success. The actors crowded round her. "We'd no idea of it!" "Capital!" "A great hit!" they exclaimed. "Mother Hubbard is the star of the evening," said Leonard Brookhouse. "No, indeed," returned Leslie, patting Sir Charles's head,—"this is the dog-star." "Rather a Sirius reflection upon the rest of us," rejoined Brookhouse, shrugging his shoulders, as he walked off to take his place in the "Oath," and Leslie disappeared to make ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... light; and in some sort he represents the voracity or devouring of Hades itself; and the mediaeval representation of the mouth of hell perpetuates the same thought. Then, also, the power of evil passion is partly associated with the red and scorching light of Sirius, as opposed to the pure light of the sun: he is the dog-star of ruin; and hence the continual Homeric dwelling upon him, and comparison of the flame of anger to his swarthy light; only, in his scorching, it is thirst, not hunger, over which he rules physically; ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... Sirius sinks in the western sky after ruling the winter heavens, and the higher that red Arcturus rises, so the buds thicken, open, and bloom. When the Pleiades begin to rise in the early evening, the leaves are turning colour, and the seed vessels of the flowers ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... in a mountain of very red marble, having on the left a marble wall forming a parapet about five feet high. At intervals solid pedestals rise from this wall, bearing every token of having served to support colossal statues of Sirius, the barking Anubis, or the Dog star. One hundred and thirty-three of these pedestals with the marks just mentioned are still in their places, but only two figures of the dog were recognizable when I was there; these, however, though much ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... construction of huge floating structures, and a warning that the highest flights of constructive genius may prove abortive if not strictly subordinated to the practical conditions and commercial requirements of the times. The Sirius and Great Western crossed the Atlantic in 1838, and in 1840 the first ship of the since celebrated Cunard Company made her first voyage. This was the Britannia, which, with her sister ships, the Arcadia, Caledonia, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... drive, they were looking down from the summit of a hill right upon the house-tops of Ems. There it lay, deep sunk in the hollow beneath them, as if some inhabitant of Sirius, like him spoken of in Voltaire's tale of Micromegas, held it in the hollow of his hand. High and peaked rise the hills, that throw their shadows into this romantic valley, and at their base winds the river Lahn. Our travellersdrove through the ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... appearing in the figure of a retired general who had served in the Caucasus, with a star of the Lion and the Sun on my coat. But I was positively afraid of doing it, for you'd have thrashed me for daring to pin the Lion and the Sun on my coat, instead of, at least, the Polar Star or the Sirius. And you keep on saying I am stupid, but, mercy on us! I make no claim to be equal to you in intelligence. Mephistopheles declared to Faust that he desired evil, but did only good. Well, he can say what he likes, it's quite the opposite with me. I am perhaps the one man ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... your charts, the charts you use and you at sea, the charts of the heavens, where what stars we know are marked, the sun and the moon and Venus and Jupiter, and Sirius the dog star, and Saturn, and the star you steer your ship by, the polar star.... And all the constellations, the Milky Way, and the belt of Orion, and the Plow and the Great Bear and the great glory you see when you pass the line, the Southern ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... Supra- and Sub-lapsarians! How quickly would Taylor have detected in an adversary the absurd realization contained in this and the following passages of the abstract notion, sin, from the sinner: as if sin were any thing but a man sinning, or a man who has sinned! As well might a sin committed in Sirius or the planet Saturn justify the infliction of conflagration on the earth and hell-fire on all its rational inhabitants. Sin! the word sin! for abstracted from the sinner it is no more: and if not abstracted from him, it remains ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... expensive in Europe. Yet when the day of trial came, all this imposing force was of no use whatever, and might as well have not existed. Their ruin could not have been more complete or more rapid if they had not possessed an ironclad or a regiment. And all this was accomplished by me, Captain John Sirius, belonging to the navy of one of the smallest Powers in Europe, and having under my command a flotilla of eight vessels, the collective cost of which was eighteen hundred thousand pounds. No one has a better right to tell the ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... more than half the visible and probably an overwhelming proportion of the faintest stars. Sirius, Vega, Regulus, Altair, are amongst its leading members. Their spectra are distinguished by the breadth and intensity of the four dark bars due to the absorption of hydrogen, and by the extreme faintness of the metallic lines, of which, nevertheless, hundreds are disclosed ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... resplendit; L'essaim prodigieux des Pleiades grandit; Sirius ouvre son cratere; Arcturus, oiseau d'or, scintille dans son nid; Le Scorpion hideux fait cabrer au zenith Le poitrail bleu ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... his arms): I fall, Sir, out of heaven! Now, would you credit it, that as I fell I saw that Sirius wears a nightcap? True! (Confidentially): The other Bear is still too small to bite. (Laughing): I went through the Lyre, but I snapped a cord; (Grandiloquent): I mean to write the whole thing in a book; The small gold stars, that, wrapped up in my cloak, ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... at full throttle, Tom settled back and pointed out several of the large star clusters in the clear airless void of space around them. Andromeda Galaxy whirled above them like a Fourth-of-July pin wheel. And the sun stars of Regulus, Sirius, and the Seven Sisters sparkled like ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... star of Isis, Sirius or the dog star, whose course in the time of the Pharaohs coincided with the exact Solar year, and served at a very early date as a foundation for the reckoning of time ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... blight our vines, Nor Sirius blaze above us, But you and I shall drink our wines And sing to the ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... of the radiation. This varies within wide limits. The faintest star which can give an impression on the photographic plates of the greatest instrument of the Mount Wilson observatory (100 inch reflector) is nearly 100 million times fainter than Sirius, a star which is itself more than 10000 million times fainter than ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier
... your alarm was justified. You are suffering from one of the commonest and one of the gravest mental derangements. I'm surprised, but there it is. You haven't yet discovered that it's the earth you're living on. You fancy it may be Sirius, Uranus, Aldebaran or Jupiter—let us say Jupiter. Perhaps in one of these worlds matters are ordered differently, and their truth is not our truth; but let me assure you that the name of your planet ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... the heat That blazes in the days of Sirius, But men shall quaff thy soda sweet, And ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... not yet arisen, but there was a beautiful clear sky. The great Southern Cross hung in the heavens like a giant lantern. On one side, and on line with each other, shone the two brightest stars in the heavens, the first being the Dog Star Sirius, and the next in order, Canopus, the one white, and the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay |
