1 The sultry “dog days of summer” get their name from ancient astronomers who noticed that those days coincide with the period when Sirius, the Dog Star, rises at the same time as the sun.
2 Bad astronomy: Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, but it is just one 10-billionth as bright as the sun and has no effect on our weather.
3 Nerd. Fido will touch his nose to a computer screen if it has a picture of a dog on it but not if it shows a landscape, University of Vienna researchers have found.
