Anyone who enjoys gazing at the night sky probably has a few favorite star patterns they like to look for: The Big Dipper, for example, or Orion’s belt. But those familiar shapes that many of us ...

Mizar, a star in the Big Dipper's handle, has a tiny companion. This star, Alcor, was known to the ancients. The pair was ...

Summer is a good time to view the Big Dipper because it's high in the northern sky during the evening. The Big Dipper is not ...

Many people grow up believing the Big Dipper is a constellation, but it’s not. It’s an asterism — a small, eye-catching, connect-the-dots pattern made of stars lying either within a single ...

Arcturus (at a magnitude of -0.05), one of the few stars mentioned by name in the Bible, is a giant, about 25 times the diameter of our sun and 36.7 light years away. Boötes is chasing the Bears with ...

Whether you call it the Plough or the Big Dipper – or even the saucepan ... Ursa Major, the constellation in which it lies, doesn’t mean we have explored everything in this patch of the ...

The Big Dipper is one of the most famous star groupings and one that nearly all stargazers instantly recognize. Notice I didn’t call it a “constellation,” because it’s not a constellation.