50 Fun Facts About Ursa Major

Which region of the world is named from the Greek word for bear, after the starry bears that circle above it?

The Arctic comes from the Greek arktikos, literally 'of the Bear', after the bear constellations of the northern sky; Antarctic simply means 'opposite the Arctic'.

Ursa Major is the third-largest constellation; which long, winding one is the largest of all?

Hydra, the water snake, winds more than a quarter of the way around the sky, and it became the largest only after astronomers broke the even bigger ship Argo Navis into three.

What do stargazers in Britain and Ireland traditionally call the seven stars Americans know as the Big Dipper?

The Plough is the older name by centuries: 'dipper', an American word for a long-handled ladle, was attached to these stars only in the 1800s.

Which two Big Dipper stars are the "pointers" to Polaris?

Dubhe and Merak mark the outer edge of the bowl, and because the whole Dipper wheels around the pole, the line through them finds the North Star at any hour and in any season.

Which star lies at the very end of the Big Dipper's handle?

Alkaid was the 'army-breaking star' to Chinese and Japanese astrologers, who likened the handle to a sword and read a battle's luck from the direction its tip pointed.

Despite carrying the letter epsilon, which star is the brightest in Ursa Major?

Alioth outshines the star labelled alpha because Johann Bayer, lettering the Dipper in 1603, simply worked along the pattern from bowl to handle and ignored brightness.

On traditional star charts, the Big Dipper's handle forms which part of the Great Bear?

Its tail, though real bears have only stubs; an old tale jokes that it stretched when Zeus swung the bear up into the sky.

Which faint star beside Mizar in the Dipper's handle served as a traditional test of eyesight?

Alcor kept a secret until 2009, when two teams found it has a faint companion of its own, turning the famous 'double' it forms with Mizar into six stars in all.

What are Mizar and its faint companion nicknamed?

Horse and Rider: the Dipper's three handle stars were pictured as a team of horses, so Mizar became the middle horse and its little companion 'Jack on the Middle Horse'.

Which astronomer, urged by a friend in 1617, recorded that Mizar splits into two stars through a telescope?

Galileo Galilei made the first detailed record of a telescopic double star, yet for centuries the credit went to Riccioli, who mentioned Mizar's split only around 1650.

Five Big Dipper stars drift through space together; which two are heading a different way?

Dubhe and Alkaid are not part of the family of five, and in about 50,000 years their drift will have bent the Dipper into a different shape.

Following the curve of the Big Dipper's handle away from the bowl leads to which bright orange star?

Arcturus: stargazers 'arc to Arcturus', and in 1933 its light, believed to have left the star around Chicago's 1893 fair, was used to switch on the city's next World's Fair.

In Greek myth, which nymph pursued by Zeus was turned into a bear and set in the sky as Ursa Major?

Callisto's place among the stars so enraged Zeus's wife Hera that she had the sea gods forbid the bear ever to bathe in the ocean, the myth's reason the Great Bear never sets.

In one ancient telling, Arcas, son of the nymph who became the Great Bear, joined her in the sky as which constellation?

Boötes was the 'bear-keeper' to the Greeks, a herdsman forever driving the bear around the pole, and its brightest star's name means bear guard; other tellings make Arcas the Little Bear.

In some tellings, what disguise did Zeus adopt to approach the nymph who became the Great Bear?

He took the form of Artemis because the nymph had sworn off men to hunt with the goddess; when her pregnancy showed, Artemis banished her from the band.

In Homer's epic, which hero sails by the Great Bear, keeping it on his left?

Odysseus kept the Bear on his left to hold a course east for Ithaca; Homer adds that it alone never bathes in the ocean, which made it a fixed mark for sailors.

Which astronomer of the 2nd century AD listed Ursa Major among his original 48 constellations?

Ptolemy's 48, set down in his Almagest, shaped Western star maps ever after: 47 are still official constellations, and only the giant ship Argo was later broken up.

In Hindu tradition, the seven stars of the Big Dipper represent which revered group?

The Saptarishi, or Seven Sages: Mizar is the sage Vasishtha and the faint star beside it his wife Arundhati, a pair held up at Hindu weddings as the model of a devoted couple.

Which Chinese space programme is named after the Chinese word for the Big Dipper?

BeiDou means 'Northern Dipper'; Chinese stargazers needed the 'northern' because they also saw a Southern Dipper, in the stars the West calls Sagittarius.

In pre-Islamic Arab tradition, the Big Dipper was seen as what?

A funeral bier followed by mourners: in one Arab folk tale they are the dead man's children, circling the Pole Star night after night because it was his killer.

How did the Iroquois interpret the handle stars of the Dipper?

Hunters pursuing the bear: the middle one carries a pot to cook it in, the faint star beside Mizar, and a related tale says the wounded bear's blood turns the autumn leaves red.

What did Norse pagans call the Big Dipper?

Woden's wagon rolled on in later names: Germans still call the pattern the Great Wagon, and the old English Charles's Wain, meaning wagon, may be an echo of Odin's.

Which folk song, long linked to the Underground Railroad, is thought to point escapers north by the Big Dipper?

Follow the Drinkin' Gourd: a hollowed gourd was the everyday water dipper, though the song first reached print only in 1928, so whether it ever guided anyone is unproven.

In the traditional Sámi sky, stars of the Big Dipper form what?

The bow of the hunter Fávdna: he is a bright star nearby, forever stalking Sarvva, a giant reindeer or elk sprawled across Cassiopeia, Perseus and Auriga.

Which animated Disney series has a hero nicknamed Dipper for a Big Dipper-shaped birthmark on his forehead?

Gravity Falls: Dipper Pines hides the birthmark under his fringe, and the show keeps the secret until the episode 'Double Dipper' reveals where his nickname comes from.

'Septentrional', an old word for northern, comes from the Latin name for the Dipper's stars, the seven what?

Oxen: the Romans saw the seven stars as a team plodding round the pole, like oxen circling a threshing floor in one old reading, and septentriones became their word for the north.

The flag of which US state shows the Big Dipper and Polaris in gold on blue?

Alaska's flag was drawn in 1927 by Benny Benson, a schoolboy living in a children's home, who years later spent his $1,000 prize on training as a diesel mechanic.

A line drawn southward along either side of the Big Dipper's bowl leads stargazers to which zodiac constellation?

Leo: one line runs to Regulus, the lion's brightest star, and because Leo sits directly south of the bear, the two constellations climb highest together on spring evenings.

Which region of Spain flies a crimson flag whose seven white stars are said to stand for the Great Bear?

Madrid: the stars echo the bear on the capital's coat of arms, and the same bear, strawberry tree and seven stars appear on the badge of Atlético Madrid.

Which galaxy pair sits above the Great Bear's head?

Bode's Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy: Johann Bode found both on the last night of 1774, and a close brush with its bigger neighbour has set the Cigar ablaze with newborn stars.

Which face-on spiral galaxy, M101, lies north of the last star in the Big Dipper's handle?

The Pinwheel Galaxy is more than twice as wide as the Milky Way, yet its light is so spread out that Pierre Méchain, who found it in 1781, called it 'very obscure'.

Which planetary nebula near the Big Dipper's bowl, M97, is named for the two dark 'eyes' in its round disc?

The Owl Nebula got its name after the Earl of Rosse sketched it at the telescope in 1848 and the drawing came out looking like an owl's head.

Roughly how far from Earth is M81, Ursa Major's bright spiral galaxy?

About 12 million light-years, a near neighbour as galaxies go; tidal tugs-of-war with two smaller companions have torn streamers of hydrogen gas out of all three.

Greek sailors steered by the Great Bear; which seafaring people preferred the smaller Little Bear as their guide?

The Phoenicians had the sharper method, since the Little Bear circles closer to the pole, and the philosopher Thales is said to have urged Greek sailors to copy them.

Which famous 1995 space-telescope image came from staring for ten days at a seemingly empty patch of Ursa Major?

The Hubble Deep Field covered a patch of sky no bigger than a pinhead held at arm's length, yet those ten days of exposures turned up about 3,000 galaxies.

In which book of the Bible is a man challenged to guide 'the Bear with her train'?

Job: most modern translations read the Hebrew word as the Bear, a debated call, while Jerome's Latin Bible made it a different star altogether and the King James Version kept his choice.

Lalande 21185, one of the nearest stars to the Sun, is what type of star?

It is the brightest red dwarf in the northern sky yet still too faint to see with the naked eye, at 8.3 light-years.

47 Ursae Majoris is named Chalawan, after a Thai folktale's king of which animals?

Crocodiles: Chalawan is the crocodile king of a Thai folktale, a fitting pick by the astronomy society that proposed it, because Thais call the Dipper's stars the Crocodile Stars.

Xi Ursae Majoris, in the Great Bear's hind paw, was the first double star to have what calculated?

Its orbit: Félix Savary computed it in the 1820s from measurements begun when William Herschel split the pair in 1780, and the two stars circle each other about every 60 years.

W Ursae Majoris is the prototype of which class of variable star?

Contact binaries are pairs so close that the two stars touch and share one outer envelope, dimming every few hours as each star passes in front of the other.

Which US state, nicknamed the Diamond State, adopted a faint star in Ursa Major as its official state star?

Delaware made it official in 2000 after a 12-year-old, Amy Nerlinger, won a museum contest to name the star: the Delaware Diamond, too faint to see without binoculars.

In Arab star lore, three pairs of stars along Ursa Major's southern edge represent what?

The footprints of a leaping gazelle: each pair of stars is one bound, and their names still keep count, from Alula, 'the first', to Talitha, 'the third'.

Which storybook character's creator redrew the Great Bear and the other constellations in a 1952 stargazing guide?

Curious George's creator, H. A. Rey, wanted the constellations to be easier to learn, so his book The Stars redrew them as simple figures that look like their names.

Van Gogh's 1888 night view of Arles shows the Big Dipper sparkling over which river?

The Rhône: he painted Starry Night Over the Rhône outdoors under a gas lamp, and wrote that the Great Bear had 'a green and pink sparkle' against the harsh gold of the gaslight.

Seen from mid-northern latitudes, the Big Dipper never sets below the horizon; what do astronomers call such stars?

Circumpolar stars wheel around the pole without setting, so the Dipper is up all year, high on spring evenings and low on autumn ones: 'spring up, fall down'.

Which constellation borders Ursa Major to the north?

Draco's tail winds between the two bears, and one of its stars, Thuban, was the pole star several thousand years ago, long before Polaris inherited the role.

Roughly what share of the entire sky does Ursa Major cover?

About 3%: with the sky shared among 88 constellations, even the third-largest gets a thin slice, and the bear's 1,280 square degrees were fixed only in 1930, when astronomers drew official borders.

Ursa Major's pointer stars lead to Polaris, itself the brightest star of which pattern?

The Little Dipper hangs from Polaris, the tip of its handle, but its middle stars are so faint that stargazers commonly use the brighter Big Dipper to find it.

Staff and students at which London college found 2014's supernova in M82?

University College London: with cloud closing in, astronomer Steve Fossey swapped his class for a ten-minute telescope demonstration, and he and four undergraduates spotted a new star that set off a global scramble to observe it.

Once thought newborn, the galaxy I Zwicky 18 was nicknamed after which fictional character when old stars turned up inside?

Dorian Gray: like the portrait in Wilde's novel, the galaxy seems to age the more astronomers study it, and faint stars found in 2007 showed it could be billions of years old.