Ursa Minor

Constellation | |
10°. .Best visible at 21:00 (9 p.m.) during the month of June[2] |
Ursa Minor (
Polaris, the brightest
History and mythology

In the
According to
The ancient name of the constellation is Cynosura (Greek Κυνοσούρα "dog's tail"). The origin of this name is unclear (Ursa Minor being a "dog's tail" would imply that another constellation nearby is "the dog", but no such constellation is known).[10] Instead, the mythographic tradition of Catasterismi makes Cynosura the name of an Oread nymph described as a nurse of Zeus, honoured by the god with a place in the sky.[11] There are various proposed explanations for the name Cynosura. One suggestion connects it to the myth of Callisto, with her son Arcas replaced by her dog being placed in the sky by Zeus.[10] Others have suggested that an archaic interpretation of Ursa Major was that of a cow, forming a group with
An alternative myth tells of two bears that saved Zeus from his murderous father Cronus by hiding him on Mount Ida. Later Zeus set them in the sky, but their tails grew long from their being swung up into the sky by the god.[14]
Because Ursa Minor consists of seven stars, the
In
Characteristics

Ursa Minor is bordered by
The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the IAU (International Astronomical Union) in 1922, is "UMi".[20] The official constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 22 segments (illustrated in infobox). In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between 08h 41.4m and 22h 54.0m , while the declination coordinates range from the north celestial pole to 65.40° in the south.[1] Its position in the far northern celestial hemisphere means that the whole constellation is visible only to observers in the northern hemisphere.[21][b]
Features

Stars
The German cartographer Johann Bayer used the Greek letters alpha to theta to label the most prominent stars in the constellation, while his countryman Johann Elert Bode subsequently added iota through phi. Only lambda and pi remain in use, likely because of their proximity to the north celestial pole.[15] Within the constellation's borders, there are 39 stars brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6.5.[21][c]
The traditional names of the main seven in Johann Bayer's ordering are:
- Polaris
- Kochab
- Pherkad
- Yildun
- Epsilon Ursae Minoris has no traditional name.
- Zeta Ursae Minoris has no traditional name.
- Eta Ursae Minoris has no traditional name.
Marking the Little Bear's tail,
Traditionally called Kochab, Beta Ursae Minoris, at apparent magnitude 2.08, is slightly less bright than Polaris.

Traditionally known as Pherkad, Gamma Ursae Minoris has an apparent magnitude that varies between 3.04 and 3.09 roughly every 3.4 hours.[31] It and Kochab have been termed the "guardians of the pole star".[32] A white bright giant of spectral type A3II-III,[31] with around 4.8 times the Sun's mass, 1,050 times its luminosity and 15 times its radius,[33] it is 487±8 light-years distant from Earth.[27] Pherkad belongs to a class of stars known as Delta Scuti variables[31]—short period (six hours at most) pulsating stars that have been used as standard candles and as subjects to study asteroseismology.[34] Also possibly a member of this class is Zeta Ursae Minoris,[35] a white star of spectral type A3V,[36] which has begun cooling, expanding and brightening. It is likely to have been a B3 main-sequence star and is now slightly variable.[35] At magnitude 4.95 the dimmest of the seven stars of the Little Dipper is Eta Ursae Minoris.[37] A yellow-white main-sequence star of spectral type F5V, it is 97 light-years distant.[38] It is double the Sun's diameter, 1.4 times as massive, and shines with 7.4 times its luminosity.[37] Nearby Zeta lies 5.00-magnitude Theta Ursae Minoris. Located 860 ± 80 light-years distant,[39] it is an orange giant of spectral type K5III that has expanded and cooled off the main sequence, and has an estimated diameter around 4.8 times that of the Sun.[40]
Making up the handle of the Little Dipper are Delta Ursae Minoris, or Yildun,[41] and Epsilon Ursae Minoris. Just over 3.5 degrees from the north celestial pole, Delta is a white main-sequence star of spectral type A1V with an apparent magnitude of 4.35,[42] located 172±1 light-years from Earth.[27] It has around 2.8 times the diameter and 47 times the luminosity of the Sun.[43] A triple star system,[44] Epsilon Ursae Minoris shines with a combined average light of magnitude 4.22.[45] A yellow giant of spectral type G5III,[45] the primary is a RS Canum Venaticorum variable star. It is a spectroscopic binary, with a companion 0.36 AU distant, and a third star—an orange main-sequence star of spectral type K0—8100 AU distant.[44]
Located close to Polaris is
Eclipsing variables are star systems that vary in brightness because of one star passing in front of the other rather than from any intrinsic change in luminosity.
Taken from the villain in The Magnificent Seven, Calvera is the nickname given to an X-ray source known as 1RXS J141256.0+792204 in the ROSAT All-Sky Survey Bright Source Catalog (RASS/BSC).[57] It has been identified as an isolated neutron star, one of the closest of its kind to Earth.[58] Ursa Minor has two enigmatic white dwarfs. Documented on January 27, 2011, H1504+65 is a faint (magnitude 15.9) star with the hottest surface temperature—200,000 K—yet discovered for a white dwarf. Its atmosphere, composed of roughly half carbon, half oxygen and 2% neon, is devoid of hydrogen and helium—its composition unexplainable by current models of stellar evolution.[59] WD 1337+705 is a cooler white dwarf that has magnesium and silicon in its spectrum, suggesting a companion or circumstellar disk, though no evidence for either has come to light.[60] WISE 1506+7027 is a brown dwarf of spectral type T6 that is a mere 11.1+2.3
−1.3 light-years away from Earth.[61] A faint object of magnitude 14, it was discovered by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) in 2011.[62]
Kochab aside, three more stellar systems have been discovered to contain planets. 11 Ursae Minoris is an orange giant of spectral type K4III around 1.8 times as massive as the Sun. Around 1.5 billion years old, it has cooled and expanded since it was an A-type main-sequence star. Around 390 light-years distant, it shines with an apparent magnitude of 5.04. A planet around 11 times the mass of Jupiter was discovered in 2009 orbiting the star with a period of 516 days.[63] HD 120084 is another evolved star, a yellow giant of spectral type G7III, around 2.4 times the mass of the Sun. It has a planet 4.5 times the mass of Jupiter, with one of the most eccentric planetary orbits (e = 0.66), discovered by precisely measuring the radial velocity of the star in 2013.[64] HD 150706 is a sunlike star of spectral type G0V some 89 light-years distant from the Solar System. It was thought to have a planet as massive as Jupiter at a distance of 0.6 AU, but this was discounted in 2007.[65] A further study published in 2012 showed that it has a companion around 2.7 times as massive as Jupiter that takes around 16 years to complete an orbit and is 6.8 AU distant from its star.[66]
Deep-sky objects

Ursa Minor is rather devoid of deep-sky objects. The Ursa Minor Dwarf, a dwarf spheroidal galaxy, was discovered by Albert George Wilson of the Lowell Observatory in the Palomar Sky Survey in 1955.[67] Its centre is around 225000 light-years distant from Earth.[68] In 1999, Kenneth Mighell and Christopher Burke used the Hubble Space Telescope to confirm that the galaxy had had a single burst of star formation that took place around 14 billion years ago and lasted around 2 billion years,[69] and that the galaxy was probably as old as the Milky Way itself.[70]
NGC 6217 is a barred spiral galaxy located some 67 million light-years away,[73] which can be located with a 10 cm (4 in) or larger telescope as an 11th-magnitude object about 2.5° east-northeast of Zeta Ursae Minoris.[74] It has been characterized as a starburst galaxy, which means it is undergoing a high rate of star formation compared with a typical galaxy.[75]
NGC 6251 is an active supergiant elliptical radio galaxy more than 340 million light-years away from Earth. It has a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus, and is one of the most extreme examples of a Seyfert galaxy. This galaxy may be associated with gamma-ray source 3EG J1621+8203, which has high-energy gamma-ray emission.[76] It is also noted for its one-sided radio jet—one of the brightest known—discovered in 1977.[77]
Meteor showers
The Ursids, a prominent meteor shower that occurs in Ursa Minor, peaks between December 18 and 25. Its parent body is the comet 8P/Tuttle.[78]
See also
- Polaris Flare
- Ursa Minor Beta, fictional planet in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- Ursa Minor (Chinese astronomy)
Notes
- ^ The position of the north celestial pole moves in accordance with the Earth's axial precession such that in 12,000 years' time, Vega will be the Pole Star.[9]
- ^ While parts of the constellation technically rise above the horizon to observers between the equator and 24°S, stars within a few degrees of the horizon are to all intents and purposes unobservable.[21]
- ^ Objects of magnitude 6.5 are among the faintest visible to the unaided eye in suburban-rural transition night skies.[22]
- ^ Or more specifically 130.9±0.6 light-years by parallax measurement.[27]
References
- ^ a b c d e f "Ursa Minor, Constellation Boundary". The Constellations. International Astronomical Union. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
- ^ a b Department of Astronomy (1995). "Ursa Minor". University of Wisconsin–Madison. Retrieved 27 June 2015.
- ^ a b "Star Tales – Ursa Minor". Retrieved 2024-07-22.
- ^ Ridpath, Ian. "Urania's Mirror c.1825 – Ian Ridpath's Antique Star Atlases". Self-published. Retrieved 13 February 2012.
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- ^ Hermann Hunger, David Edwin Pingree, Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia (1999), p. 68.
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- ^ Ridpath, Ian. "Ursa Minor". Star Tales. Self-published. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
Blomberg, Peter E. (2007). "How Did the Constellation of the Bear Receive its Name?" (PDF). In Pásztor, Emília (ed.). Archaeoastronomy in Archaeology and Ethnography: Papers from the Annual Meeting of SEAC (European Society for Astronomy in Culture), held in Kecskemét in Hungary in 2004. Oxford, UK: Archaeopress. pp. 129–32. ISBN 978-1-4073-0081-8.
- ^ ISBN 978-3-642-35963-7.
- ^ a b Allen, Richard Hinckley (1899). Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning. 447f. "The origin of this word is uncertain, for the star group does not answer to its name unless the dog himself be attached; still some, recalling a variant legend of Kallisto and her Dog instead of Arcas, have thought that here lay the explanation. Others have drawn this title from that of the Attican promontory east of Marathon, because sailors, on their approach to it from the sea, saw these stars shining above it and beyond; but if there be any connection at all here, the reversed derivation is more probable; while Bournouf asserted that it is in no way associated with the Greek word for "dog."
- 2.2.
- ^ 265f. Robert Brown, Researches into the origin of the primitive constellations of the Greeks, Phoenicians and Babylonians (1899), "M. Syoronos (Types Mon. des anciens p. 116) is of opinion that in the case of some Kretan coin-types, Ursa Maj. is represented as a Cow, hence Boôtês as 'the Herdsman', and Ursa Min. as a Dog ('Chienne' cf. Kynosoura, Kynoupês), a Zeus-suckler." A supposed Latin tradition of naming Ursa Minor Catuli "whelps" or Canes Laconicae "Spartan dogs", recorded in Johann Heinrich Alsted (1649, 408), is probably an early modern innovation.
- ^ "Very recently, however, Brown [Robert Brown, Researches into the origin of the primitive constellations of the Greeks, Phoenicians and Babylonians] has suggested that the word is not Hellenic in origin, but Euphratean; and, in confirmation of this, mentions a constellation title from that valley, transcribed by Sayce as An‑ta-sur‑ra, the Upper Sphere. Brown reads this An‑nas-sur‑ra, High in Rising, certainly very appropriate to Ursa Minor; and he compares it with Κ‑υν‑όσ‑ου‑ρα, or, the initial consonant being omitted, Unosoura." (Allen, Richard Hinckley. "Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning." New York, Dover Editions, 1963, p. 448.) Brown points out that Aratus fittingly describes "Cynosura" as "high-running" ("at the close of night Cynosura's head runs very high", κεφαλὴ Κυνοσουρίδος ἀκρόθι νυκτὸς ὕψι μάλα τροχάει v. 308f).
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- ^ Bortle, John E. (February 2001). "The Bortle Dark-Sky Scale". Sky & Telescope. Archived from the original on 31 March 2014. Retrieved 29 November 2014.
- ^ a b Otero, Sebastian Alberto (4 December 2007). "Alpha Ursae Minoris". The International Variable Star Index. American Association of Variable Star Observers. Retrieved 16 May 2014.
- ^ "Alpha Ursae Minoris – Classical Cepheid (Delta Cep Type)". SIMBAD Astronomical Database. Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg. Retrieved 19 August 2014.
- ^ Kaler, James B. "Polaris". Stars. University of Illinois. Retrieved 19 August 2014.
- ^ a b "Beta Ursae Minoris – Variable Star". SIMBAD Astronomical Database. Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg. Retrieved 18 May 2014.
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- ^ Kaler, James B. (20 December 2013). "Pherkad". Stars. University of Illinois. Retrieved 18 May 2014.
- ^ Templeton, Matthew (16 July 2010). "Delta Scuti and the Delta Scuti Variables". Variable Star of the Season. AAVSO (American Association of Variable Star Observers). Retrieved 19 August 2014.
- ^ a b Kaler, James B. "Alifa al Farkadain". Stars. University of Illinois. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
- ^ "Zeta Ursae Minoris – Variable Star". SIMBAD Astronomical Database. Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
- ^ a b Kaler, James B. "Anwar al Farkadain". Stars. University of Illinois. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
- ^ "Eta Ursae Minoris". SIMBAD Astronomical Database. Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ "Theta Ursae Minoris – Variable Star". SIMBAD Astronomical Database. Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
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- ^ "Naming Stars". IAU.org. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
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- ^ Kaler, James B. "Yildun". Stars. University of Illinois. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
- ^ a b Kaler, James B. "Epsilon Ursae Minoris". Stars. University of Illinois. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
- ^ a b "Epsilon Ursae Minoris – Variable of RS CVn type". SIMBAD Astronomical Database. Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
- ^ Watson, Christopher (4 January 2010). "Lambda Ursae Minoris". The International Variable Star Index. American Association of Variable Star Observers. Retrieved 21 June 2014.
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- ^ Otero, Sebastian Alberto (16 November 2009). "RR Ursae Minoris". The International Variable Star Index. American Association of Variable Star Observers. Retrieved 18 May 2014.
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- ^ Watson, Christopher (4 January 2010). "W Ursae Minoris". The International Variable Star Index. American Association of Variable Star Observers. Retrieved 18 July 2015.
- .
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{{cite journal}}
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- S2CID 119085245.
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- ^ Jenniskens, Peter (September 2012). "Mapping Meteoroid Orbits: New Meteor Showers Discovered". Sky & Telescope: 24.
External links
- The Deep Photographic Guide to the Constellations: Ursa Minor
- The clickable Ursa Minor
- Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (ca 160 medieval and early modern images of Ursa Minor)