Here’s a funny thing about the Little Dipper. Almost everyone has heard of it, plenty of people think they’ve seen it, and most of them are actually looking at something else entirely. It’s the shy cousin of the famous Big Dipper, dimmer and trickier to spot, but it holds the single most useful star in the entire northern sky. Once you know how to find it, you’ll never be lost at night again.
So let’s get properly acquainted with the Little Dipper, what it really is, and how to track it down tonight.
First Things First: It’s Not Actually a Constellation
This trips people up all the time, so let’s clear it up right away. The Little Dipper isn’t officially a constellation. It’s an asterism, which is just a recognizable pattern of stars sitting inside a larger constellation. The real constellation here is Ursa Minor, the Little Bear, and the seven brightest stars within it happen to form that little ladle shape we all call the Little Dipper.
The handle of the dipper is the bear’s tail, and the bowl is its body. The names get mixed up so often that most people use “Little Dipper” and “Ursa Minor” as if they mean the same thing, and honestly, for stargazing purposes, that’s fine.
The Star That Doesn’t Move
Now for the reason the Little Dipper matters so much. At the very tip of its handle sits Polaris, the North Star, and Polaris has a genuinely magical quality, it barely moves.
Earth’s north pole points almost exactly at Polaris, so as our planet spins through the night, every other star wheels slowly around the sky while Polaris stays nearly fixed in place. That’s why sailors, travelers, and navigators leaned on it for thousands of years. Find Polaris, and you’ve found true north, no compass needed. Columbus even mentioned the nearby stars in the log of his famous voyage.
One myth worth busting though, a lot of people assume Polaris is the brightest star in the sky. It isn’t. It’s actually fairly modest, ranking around the 48th brightest. Its fame comes entirely from where it sits, not how brightly it shines.
How to Actually Find It Tonight
Because the Little Dipper’s stars are faint, the easiest way to find it is to cheat a little and use its big, bright neighbor first.
Start by finding the Big Dipper, which is far easier to spot. Look at the two stars that form the outer edge of the Big Dipper’s bowl, these are named Dubhe and Merak, and stargazers call them the “pointer stars” for good reason. Draw an imaginary line up through those two stars and extend it about five times that distance. You’ll run almost straight into Polaris. From there, the rest of the Little Dipper’s handle and bowl curl away from it, though you’ll need a reasonably dark sky to trace the fainter stars. If you’re new to picking shapes out of the night sky, our beginner’s guide to the sky’s colorful stars is a friendly place to build up your eye.
Here’s a handy bonus, if the Little Dipper’s dim stars vanish on you, it usually means your sky has too much light pollution or moonlight. The two brightest bowl stars, Kochab and Pherkad, are nicknamed the “Guardians of the Pole” because they seem to march in a circle around Polaris like sentries on duty.
Always Up There, All Year Round
One of the nicest things about Ursa Minor is that from the Northern Hemisphere you never have to wait for the right season. It’s a circumpolar constellation, which means it circles the pole and stays above the horizon all night, every night of the year. Whether it’s January or July, the Little Dipper is up there somewhere, quietly pivoting around the North Star.
How high Polaris sits depends on where you are. Stand at the North Pole and it’s directly overhead. Stand on the equator and it hugs the horizon. Cross into the Southern Hemisphere and it disappears completely, which is why there’s no equivalent “South Star” for travelers down there.
A Bear Placed in the Sky by Zeus
Like most constellations, Ursa Minor comes with an old story attached. In Greek mythology the Little Bear is often linked to Arcas, son of Zeus and the maiden Callisto, who became Ursa Major, the Great Bear. To protect them both from Zeus’s jealous wife Hera, the two were transformed into bears and placed together in the sky. It’s a neat bit of storytelling that explains why the Great Bear and the Little Bear forever circle each other near the pole.
If you enjoy learning how our own star fits into all this, our explainer on what sort of star the Sun actually is is a good next stop, since Polaris and the Sun are very different beasts despite both being stars.
For more on finding the North Star, check out NASA’s own guide to what the North Star is and how to find it, and EarthSky’s detailed writeup on Ursa Minor and the Little Dipper.
If you enjoyed this article, don’t forget to drop us a comment, it really helps support the site, and be sure to check out our other articles because we think you’re going to love them too.