Sparkling, blue-white Sirius the Dog Star, the brightest star in the night sky, rises in the east-southeast 20 minutes after sunset this evening and will rise simultaneously with sunset by month’s end. As twilight deepens, Sirius – from the ancient Greek Seirios for “scorcher” or “glowing” – appears above the skyline leading one of winter’s most alluring constellations, Canus Major, or The Big Dog, into the sky. The Dog Star’s brilliance, -1.46 magnitude, is partly due to its being one of our solar system’s closest neighbors among the stars, at 8.6 light years distant. By contrast, the cosmic phenomenon, Thor’s Helmet, pictured above, is about 12,000 light years from Earth. Sirius is eminently visible even in the city sky. Look from nightfall in the southeast until after midnight in the southwest.