Test 10

Sirius C exists

 

[YES?] We should not be surprised. To quote a conservative source, the Harvard Bright Star Catalog:

"C, companion to B at 1.4" suspected but not confirmed"

It says this sort of thing for a thousand stars where the suspicion is probably correct.
One support for the existence of Sirius C is as an explanation for the historical "Red Sirius." (see Test 1, and below.)

Bonnet Bidaud and Gry say:

 

 

 

After Sirius B was discovered in 1867 (see test 2), the following statement is relevant.

-- Benest and Duvent (see below)

Observations of Sirius C in the 1920s:

-- Benest and Duvent (see below)


Details of the 1920s Observations:

"As for a third star, Phillip Fox reported in 1920 that the image of Sirius B had appeared to be double, using the same 18 1/2 inch refractor with which Clark discovered B. R.T.Innes in S.Africa and van den Bos, a renowned double-star observer, also reported the 3rd star. I should note here that these were visual studies, and the object in question is at the very limit of what can be observed with a telescope. "
-- Tom Randolph

This was the knowledge available in 1950. In 1973 I.W.Lindenblad (author of the first photographs of Sirius B, see test 2) of the U.S.Naval Observatory concluded that there was no astrometric evidence for a 3rd star, and this seemed to shut the case for a while, along with the authoritative statements of Sirius C sceptics Gatewood and Gatewood, who took detailed measurements of B.

However, the question is still taken seriously by professional astronomers, for other reasons (see test 1), and in 1995 was published Is Sirius a Triple Star?, by D. Benest and J.L. Duvent. Astronomy and Astrophysics 299, 621-628 (1995) Their case is based on orbital analysis of A and B. Despite Lindenblad's observational failure, three independent mathematical methods wth updated and more accurate orbital data show a peturbuation of 6.3 years (see test 12), which B&D hypothesise to be the orbital period of the third body, Sirius C.

 

 

They say it must be a red/brown dwarf of 0.05 Mo, and offer suggestions to observe it in the infra-red spectrum "within 3" of Sirius A."

By the way, this fascinating paper is available at the fantastic NASA Astrophysics Data System and its many mirrors.

 

In the paper about Red Sirius, Bonnet-Bidaud & Gry make an observation of Sirius' stellar field by masking the great brightness of Sirius A.

They come up with several candidate objects for Sirius C.

Benest and Duvent say,

 

There is also an amount of indirect collateral evidence for Sirius C. Red dwarfs are a common class of star but generally small and faint, and hard to observe.

Hence the surprise at the 1997 discovery that one was rather close by:

(Follows the NASA ADS abstract from The Solar Neighborhood.IV.Discovery of the Twentieth Nearest Star System
HENRY, TODD J.; IANNA, PHILIP A.; KIRKPATRICK, J. DAVY; JAHREISS, HARTMUT
Astronomical Journal v.114, p. 388-395 (07/1997)):
"As part of a RECONS (Research Consortium on Nearby Stars) effort to discover stars nearer than 10 parsecs, LHS 1565 (GJ 1061; V = 13.03; M5.5 V) has been found to be only 3.7 parsecs from the Sun using a combination of photometric, spectroscopic and trigonometric parallax work. It ranks as the twentieth closest stellar system and underscores the incompleteness of the nearby star sample, particularly for objects near the end of the main sequence.
Ironically, this unassuming red dwarf provides a shocking reminder of how much we have yet to learn about even our nearest stellar neighbours."

For instance, another pioneering result of "seeing the faint" occurred in 1994 with discovery of Gliese 623B.

PHOTO RELEASE NO.: STScI-PRC94-54
RELEASE DATE: DECEMBER 21, 1994

HUBBLE FINDS ONE OF THE SMALLEST STARS IN THE UNIVERSE

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope picture resolves, for the first time, one of the smallest stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. Called Gliese 623b or Gl623b, the diminutive star (right of center) is ten times less massive than the Sun and 60,000 times fainter. (If it were as far away as the Sun, it would be only eight times brighter than the full Moon).

Located 25 light-years away in the constellation Hercules, Gl623b is the smaller component of a double star system, where the separation between the two members is only twice the distance between Earth and the Sun (approximately 200 million miles). The small star completes one orbit about its larger companion every four years.

 

Test 11

Sirius C has "rays" (flares?).

It has been hypothesised that Sirius C became visible in the 1920s because of flaring (the observations do not match Benest and Duvent's orbital data, see above). Red dwarf flaring was discovered on October 12, 1994 by a team led by Dr. Jeffrey Linsky at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) in Boulder, Colorado, in another observation of faint objects with the Hubble Space Telescope.

The star Gliese 752B (VB10) and its companion star Gliese 752A make up a binary system located 19 light-years away in the constellation Aquila. Gliese 752A is a red dwarf that is one-third the mass of the Sun and slightly more than half its diameter. By contrast, Gliese 752B is physically smaller than the planet Jupiter and only about nine percent the mass of our Sun. This very faint star is near the threshold of the lowest possible mass for a true star (0.08 Mo), below which nuclear fusion processes cannot take place according to current models, and "brown dwarf" stars result.

Using Hubble's Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) to look for solar flares as occur on our own sun, there was surprise that while the larger red dwarf was flaring as predicted, tiny Gliese 752B, 0.08Mo, normal temperature 4,500 degsF, also produced a flare of 270,000degsF, despite not having a radiative core, meaning that it must have a strong magnetic field or "dynamo." Hence Sirius C, a star said to be of similar size, could also flare.

The Dogon say that emme ya "also emits rays which have the quality of solar rays" and give these rays the symbol

which muct be considered another triumph of imaginative thinking.

For a star that "might not exist" we have hard nos for mass, size, orbit and even an idea of its internal structure.





Test 12

Sirius C is bigger but four times lighter than Sirius B.

[NO] Benest and Duvent say the star's mass is a maximum of 0.05Mo, rather less than the Dogon figure of 0.2585Mo. (Taking Sirius B = 1.034Mo)

and later on they add,

 

As for size, if Sirius C:Sirius B = Jupiter:Earth, then the ratio of radius size is about 11. So [YES] Sirius C is bigger than Sirius B.



Test 13

Sirius C has orbit of 50 (or 32*Renard Pale) years.

[PROBABLY NOT] Benest and Duvent's figure for the orbit (which is ipso facto the proof of the star's existence) is mathematically rigorous: 6.3 years. Rather less than either 50 years and even the revised figure of 32 years.

Fourier function as used by Benest and Duvent.

 

 


Although, with the reddening of Sirius still in mind, Bonnet-Bidaud and Gry's quote below spells out the conditions for the reddening.

 


Tests 14-15



Sirius C has a "larger" orbit than Sirius B
Sirius C orbit is at right angles to that of Sirius B.


[HOW CAN WE KNOW??????]

USSS saying Sirius C has a "larger" orbit than Sirius B has been interpreted as meaning more an orbit more circular than elliptical. In this discussion Benest and Duvent cite astronomers J.R.Donnison and I. P. Williams, who had calculated the hypothetical possibility of a stable three-body arrangement in the specific Sirius system in 1978.

Early into my quest, Donnison and Williams had been quoted in the popular paranormal literature by Karl Shuker as supports for the Dogon contentions and I emailed them about this. Dr. Iwan P. Williams was gracious enough to send me this email in response. Thanks for taking the time out to talk to a rank amateur Dr. Williams!



"At the time (as indeed now) there was a lot of
interest in Planets around other stars and the paper
mentioned really has to be seen within that context.
we had written a number of papers enquiring about
the stability of hypothetical systems and a relevant
question was whether "planets" could exist within a
binary star context. The Dogon thing came out about
that time and it seemed appropriate to ask the same
question about Sirius as for a general system, ie
could we have a planet in particular given binary
system ie Sirius. the Answer is not that
remarkable, yes provided it is far enough away from
the binary pair that the changes in gravity is small
and it can be closer on average on a circular orbit
(Mean distance = minimum distance)"




Tests 16-18

 

Sirius C has one main planet in orbit.
Orbit of main planet is 30 years. (*Renard Pale)
Sirius C has two planets in orbit. (*Renard Pale)

[LET'S WAIT FOR A NEW GENERATION OF INSTRUMENTS]


Meanwhile, if Sirius C really has a planet, an orbit of 30 years is surely an over-estimate.

Does true imagination = real facts?

Diagram of Astronomical knowledge

 

 

Next

Testable Statements Sirius A Sirius B Sirius C Other Bodies Conclusions Start page Meet the Dogon! Marcel Griaule and the God of Water A Sudaneses System of Sirius The Pale Fox Ethnographical conclusions Guestnook Prizes