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Constellation
Canis Major
The shape: a stick-figure dog below dazzling Sirius.
Canis Major, the Great Dog, is Orion's hunting dog. Sirius is the brightest star in the whole night sky and only 8.6 light-years away. In ancient Egypt its appearance in the morning sky heralded the flooding of the Nile. The hot “dog days” of summer are named after it.
The stars of the figure
From bright to faint. Brightness is given in magnitudes (mag): the smaller the number, the brighter the star.
- Sirius · -1.46 mag
- Adhara · 1.5 mag
- Wezen · 1.84 mag
- Mirzam · 1.98 mag
- Aludra · 2.45 mag
In the 3D model
In the 3D model, under “Explore”, the sky dome shows when the constellation Canis Major can be seen above Switzerland. “Constellations in 3D” shows how far apart its stars really are.
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