The Dog Days of Summer
artist unknown?
The star Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, is in the constellation Canis Major. Sirius was the most important of the stars and formed the foundation of ancient Egyptian religion. It was considered to be a second Sun since its heliacal rising matched the length of our solar year at 365.2 days. This rising (conjunct the Sun) of Sirius came at the time of the inundation of the Nile, which was crucial to the survival of the ancient Egyptian culture. This was the Egyptian New Year (also called […]
It seems pretty much everyone agrees now that the earth is warming, and the extreme weather over the past week certainly seems to confirm that both the weather AND the climate is changing. Steven Forrest’s July newsletter included an article about the current Solar Maximum which reminded me that I haven’t written on this topic for quite awhile. Steven links to a
Photo from Psychedelic Adventure. On June 5th Venus will transit the Sun in a rare occurrence that will happen only twice during our lifetime. This astronomical event is a bit like an eclipse in that Venus will obscure a portion of the Sun during this transit event. Venus transits come in pairs, and the first of the current pair occurred in 2004. It’s an interesting coincidence that this major astronomical event corresponds to 2012, but it is not likely to bring about the end of the world. Much has been made of the fact that 
Cosmic Ray Origin still mysterious