Another Sirius Mystery ...

Around 140 AD Ptolemey mentioned in his Almagest that Sirius appeared red, and that is also how Homer described it. Confirming this phenomenon is a collection of about 20 different quotes from historical literature, as compiled by the astronomer Thomas Jefferson Jackson See in 1927. Modern astronomers have found no proof for the idea that a couple of thousand years Sirius B might have been a red giant, because it takes a star about 10 million years to change from a red giant to a white dwarf. In other words, there are speculations but still no valid scientific explanation for the recorded observations.

Realizing that a basically circular orbit around Sirius would cause a radical line-of-sight displacement in relation to other bright stars, a reader familiar with the science behind the so-called Yuga-Cycle suggested:

"What if we are in a highly elliptical orbit around Sirius (or a "point" between here and Sirius), and are mostly moving towards Sirius at this time? I remember Peter Bros believing the solar system is moving towards Sirius. Also, I remember reading that the ancients saw Sirius as red. This has been explained in different ways. One theory is that Sirius B was in its red giant stage, and then very rapidly became a white dwarf. I wonder if there is a possibility that the red came from a Doppler shift due to the motion of the solar system away from Sirius at that time (prior to about 500 AD at the bottom of the 24,000 year cycle). The red tint would be noticed because Sirius is so bright that the naked eye would readily detect the color. We have "turned the corner" and now are moving towards Sirius and its light is blue shifted. This may be nonsense, but thought I would put it out there (given what little we really know about gravity)."

In his book "Und Sie Dreht Sich Doch Um Sothis" (1996), Karl-H. Homann noted that the steady flickering of Sirius could be due to an interference caused by the orbital motion of Sirius A and B and the interaction of their strong gravitational and magnetic fields. The shift of the spectral lines in the spectrum of a cosmic object towards the longer wavelength (red) would not only be caused by the so-called Doppler effect, but also by the energy loss of light quanta escaping extremely strong gravitational (and magnetic) fields.