Word: ruhr
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Astronomer Wolfhard Schlosser and Historian Werner Bergmann of Ruhr-University Bochum, in West Germany, were led to their conclusion by the discovery of references to Sirius in the chronicles of a Frankish bishop, Gregory of Tours. Written around A.D. 577, Gregory's tome was designed to provide monasteries with clear instructions for setting their predawn prayer schedules; thus it listed for each month the time that certain constellations would rise above the horizon. From the rise times and periods of visibility, the researchers report in the journal Nature, they were able to identify Sirius, which Gregory called Rubeola or Robeola...
Prior to entering the white-dwarf stage, however, an aging star cools and balloons into a red giant. And that, the Ruhr researchers speculate, is probably what Sirius B was when the Babylonians--and then the Greeks, Romans and Franks--gazed skyward. To the unaided eyes of the ancients, the two closely spaced stars looked like a single pinpoint, with a decided reddish tint imparted by the dominating giant. The combined light of the binary pair would certainly have been brighter than it is today, and indeed Babylonian cuneiforms tell of Sirius' being visible in the daytime...