Our brightest star can lead us to Orion’s hunting dog

Once you spot Sirius, the rest of Canis Major can be traced using fainter stars in the constellation

This week we will use the brightest star in the night sky to find a less than obvious constellation.

Canis Major, the Great Dog, was included in Ptolemy's 2nd-century list of 48 constellations in his great work Almagest. This became the standard reference work for astronomy for a millennium, providing the basis on which the northern and equatorial skies are still divided into constellations.