The stars that make up the constellation Ursa Major were described as a "great bear" by ancient Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy in his classic studies of the night sky, and Greek myths tell the ...

The seven stars of the ladle’s cup and handle are the bear’s body and tail, and about 14 other stars outline the head, neck and legs. The Greeks at some point called this constellation Callisto.

These seven bright stars form the center of the constellation Ursa Major — Latin for "greater bear." The Big Dipper is in the northern sky, and around the world it is associated with the north.

In the case of the Big Dipper, it’s part of the constellation Ursa Major the Great Bear. ... UMa), it’s one of the “pointer stars” that skygazers use to locate Polaris, the North Star.

Ursa Major . Possibly one of the best-known constellations in the northern sky, Ursa Major—or the Great Bear—contains an asterism of seven stars known as the Big Dipper (or, in other countries ...

Mizar, a star in the Big Dipper's handle, has a tiny companion. This star, Alcor, was known to the ancients. The pair was popularly known as the "Horse and Rider." ...

For most observers in the Northern Hemisphere, the Great Bear is close enough to the north celestial pole that it never sets below the horizon, and it rotates around the North Star once a day.

Most people have never seen the Little Dipper, because most of its stars are too dim to be seen through light-polluted skies.

Astronomers from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun have discovered a new planet in the constellation of the Great Bear. It has a mass as much as 11 times that of Jupiter, orbits its star ...

It can’t be coincidence the Native North Americans, who left the Old World then, see a bear in the same stars as the Europeans. The celestial ursine, containing the seven familiar stars of the ...