The Southern Fish is connected in some way in the story but just how is not quite clear. Northwest of Aquarius lies the region of birds, while beyond the "Sea" to the southeast is the hunting scene of the giant Orion. The River Eridanus may also be seen flowing from a star near Rigel, on the foot of Orion, to a point on the shore of the "Sea."
Formalhaut rises in the south at twilight about the 10th of October and wanders westward in a small arc above the horizon. It is visible such a short time that it is said that it comes "when the leaves begin to fall and goes while they are still falling." This star rises in the south at the same time that Capella rises in the northeast, but an easier way of locating it may be found by estimating two-thirds of the distance across the sky from the outside stars in the bowl of the Big Dipper. It also lies almost exactly in a straight line with the two stars on the west side of the great Square of Pegasus at a distance equal to 3⅓ times the distance between them and the southernmost of the two.
SIRIUS
If all the diamonds in the world were melted into one huge, magical jewel, its sparkling brilliance would pale beside Sirius, the diamond of the heavens.
This wonderful, iridescent beauty, fresh as a prismatic ice-flame, if such a thing might be, is best appreciated on a clear, cold winter night when the little stars swarm out like fire-flies and the large stars burn like Aladdin gems of frost and fringing fire.
The ancient Greeks, strange to say, dreaded the sight of this beautiful star, for they not only imagined that its "burning breath" caused the unhealthy and oppressive heats of summer but that it was directly responsible for their parched grass and blighted corn, their mad dogs and raging fevers!
The unpopularity of this star was due to the fact that during the hottest days of July it rose just before the sun and preceded that luminary all day long in his pathway through the heavens. Not knowing that Sirius lay many millions of millions of miles beyond our solar system, they quite naturally supposed that his bright rays blended with those of the sun, greatly intensifying the heat. Thus Sirius caused the hottest season of the year and all the dried fields, mad dogs, plagues and fevers were attributed to its malignant influence. Since the huge star belonged to the constellation of Canis Major, the Great Dog, it was called the "Dog Star" and these hot, sultry days, the "dog-days." The dog-days lasted for about 40 days, extending from 20 days before the heliacal rising of the Dog-star Sirius to 20 days after. Owing to the precession of the equinoxes, the heliacal rising of Sirius is different from what it was to the ancients and the dog-days are now counted from the 3rd of July to the 11th of August.
Unlike the Greeks, the ancient Egyptians held Sirius in the highest esteem and built splendid temples in its honor in the valley of the Nile. J. Norman Lockyer has made an extensive study of Egyptian temples and has described them most interestingly in his book "The Dawn of Astronomy." During his explorations he found seven temples which were constructed solely to guide the light of Sirius through an opening in the side of the temple, down a long hallway to a point on the central altar. Olcott in "Star Lore of All Ages" visualizes the following beautiful scene in the most notable of these, the temple of Isis at Denerah: