Dog days of summer

Say "Hello" to Daisy the Dog. She's my roommate for the weekend and since the theme lately has revolved around summer, the old phrase "The Dog Days of Summer" come to mind. I imagine dogs laying around panting, paralyzed by the heat, and always related the saying to those suffocatingly hot days that wrap around you like a cocoon until relief can be found.

I was wrong.

The "dog days" of summer started with the ancient Greeks and Romans and refer to the time of year when the star Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, rose just prior to the sun. This is known as a heliacal rising where the star appears to be rising with the sun. This period lasted through July and August and the ancients related this time to heat, drought, plagues and madness. None of the said disasters are related to Sirius; the time frame in which the star rose just happened to coincide with one of the hottest times of the year. Most notably, the ancient Romans thought Sirius contributed to the heat of the sun due to it's brightness in the sky. (Remember, the ancient skies were not obscured by artificial light.)

As time goes by, the "dog days of summer" will become the "dog days of winter".  The Earth's rotation "wobbles", which shifts the position of the stars in the sky overtime. "Dog days" are now about 2 weeks behind the calendar date they were thousands of years ago and will fall in the middle of winter in about 10,000 years due to the rotational wobble.

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