Our family dog is a Jack Russell Terrier. Her name is Stormy - yes, Stormy. With the summertime heat, she's looked kind of pooped out lately, and that got me thinking about the so-called "dog days of summer," which we're in the middle of right now.

The term "Dog Days" actually comes from astronomy. Other than our own sun, the brightest star is Sirius, known as the "Dog Star" to the ancient Egyptians because it's in the constellation Canis Major, the "Greater Dog". From early July to mid-August, Sirius rises and sets at about the same time as our sun, and because Sirius is so bright, the Egyptians thought that its energy added to our sun's, helping to create midsummer heat waves.

What they didn't know, however, was that Sirius is more than half a million times farther from earth than the sun, too far away to make any difference in warming the Earth.