“Sirius Rising”

Oil painting on canvas.
11″x14″ (28 cm. x 35,5 cm.)
© Izabel Raa 2016

 

Sirius is a star system and the brightest star in the Earth’s night sky. It is only 8,6 light-years distant from our Sun, and traveling directly towards Earth at 7,6 km/sec. The Ancient Egyptians believed that Sirius had a colossal effect upon life on our planet.

What the naked eye perceives as a single star is actually a binary star system. The larger and brighter of the two, Sirius A, is three times the mass of our sun, and over ten times as bright. Shining with a brilliant blue-white radiance, Sirius A easily overshadows her darker companion star. Sirius B is a “white dwarf” star, invisible to the naked eye and packing the equivalent mass of our sun into an incredibly dense globe only 4 times the diameter of our Earth. The Sirius system is one of Earth’s near neighbors. Sirius is gradually moving closer to the Solar System, so it slightly increases the brightness more and more from moment to moment.

This painting has been exhibited in Jerome (Sedona, Arizona) during Art Walk event, 2017.

 

Available as:
– original,
– giclée, printed on canvas (on demand; same size or smaller),
– similar painting commission (any convenient size).