A “what if” retrospective look at Sirius B in its red supergiant
phase:

I bet you think we’ve seen just about everything Sirius has to offer.
(think again)
http://www.cosmicastronomy.com/oscillat.htm#sirius
Not that far better instruments don’t exist that could easily
accomplish a thousand fold better and of multiple narrow bandpass
imaging results of Sirius, but what the hell when at least an honest
amateur gives us a no-charge freebie whack, because we got nothing to
lose but our self-rightists pride in all things faith-based and/or
government moderated.

Red giant stars are supposedly many, and yet remain a little hard to
come by, as only a few public images of whatever is within 1000 light
years seem to exist that fit within the bloated size and color
saturated eye-candy profiles that we’ve been taught to accept.
However, the visible spectrum is extremely limited as to what is
otherwise technically accessible from just above and below our
genetically limited and thus inferior visual spectrum. (seems entirely
odd that our human evolution was rather careless in having discarded
so much nifty visual capability, in that other creatures seem to have
a far wider visual spectrum capability that includes some UV and IR
without any need of applied technology)

“Red Giant Star Found to Have Massive Tail” The obvious bow-wave
proves that even 64 km/s is pushing towards the intergalactic terminal
velocity of such stellar motion for items of this volumetric inflated
red giant size (a mere fraction of what the Sirius B red supergiant
had to have represented) http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Red_G...l_077 84.html
Mira_A of 1.2 M solar mass and several hundred solar radii (UV
colorized as bluish): “A dying star situated 400 light years away from
us exhibits an unusual and massive tail of heated gas that spreads for
more than 13 light years.” Trekking it’s way through space at a rogue
velocity of 64 km/s none the less.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/20070815/a.html

Sirius B could have been looking much like an image of Mira A, except
a whole lot larger (1000 solar radii), as viewed in visible and near
IR, as that of a nearby red supergiant star, nearly half that of the
star Betelgeuse.
http://xmm.esac.esa.int/external/xmm...aab_v2_col.pdf

Mira A, and lots more composite observationology from FAS
http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/docs/rst/Sect20/A6.html

There are many possibilities, as for how Sirius B used to function as
a truly massive (9 solar mass) and extremely vibrant star, thereby
extremely hot and fast consuming itself prior to becoming the
impressive red supergiant, creating another planetary nebula phase
before ending as the little white dwarf. For all we know Sirius B was
even a variable kind of red giant and then perhaps a slow nova
flashover phase prior to finishing off as the compressed white dwarf
we can barely see today.

These following examples are probably similar or perhaps representing
a slightly smaller version of what the Sirius star/solar system looked
like once Sirius B had started turning itself from an impressive red
supergiant into a white dwarf of perhaps 1/8th its original mass,
taking roughly 64~96,000 years for this explosive mass shedding phase
to happen. A few tens of billions of years later is when such a white
dwarf eventually becomes a black dwarf, kind of black diamond spent
star, in that our universe may or may not be quite old enough to
display such examples.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_nebula
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix_Nebula
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_Eye_Nebula
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap031207.html
http://www.uv.es/jrtorres/index6.html

Betelgeuse has been a massive red supergiant at 20+ fold the mass of
our sun, and likely worth somewhat better than two fold the mass of
the original Sirius B, as Betelgeuse currently having expanded to 1000
solar radii and growing, it'll certainly become a truly impressive
nova whenever it suddenly transforms into a white dwarf that’s nearly
the size of Saturn.

The soon to be renewed and greatly improved Hubble instrument should
accomplish the improved spectrum coverage, along with improved
resolution and several extra DB in dynamic range of imaging most
everything, along with other existing and soon to be ESA deployed
telescopes that are far superior yet, should give us even better
composite examples of what Sirius B used to look like, and quite
possibly our first light of Sirius C.

This kind of investment in astronomy should give some of us a better
deductive observationology interpretation as to what transpired right
next door to us, as well as having unavoidably contributed to some of
what our solar system has to offer. However, perhaps there’s too much
information about the Sirius star/solar system for the public to
grasp, without causing more faith-based and political harm than good.
http://www.cosmicastronomy.com/oscillat.htm#sirius

~ BG