The Big Dipper is a great starting point to learn your way around the night sky; in spring it's conveniently overhead. The Big Dipper itself is not an official constellation but part of a larger constellation called Ursa Major (the Great Bear). Ancient cultures saw the Big Dipper's star pattern as a bear with a long tail.

The name originates from the dipper-shaped pattern formed by the seven main stars of the constellation, although observers with keen vision will see that Mizar, the second star from the end of the dipper's handle is, in fact, a double-star. Binoculars make it easier to split the pair.

The stars of the Big Dipper serve as a handy guide to other stars and constellations. The two stars that form the front part of the dipper's bowl point straight to Polaris, the North Star, and because Polaris marks the location of the celestial north pole, the other stars in the sky seem to turn counterclockwise around it. Find Polaris and you know which way is north!

Polaris itself marks the end of the handle of another dipper—the Little Dipper in Ursa Minor (the Little Bear). Wrapping around Polaris is the constellation Draco. The stars that form this constellation are associated with dragons in the mythologies of many different cultures.

Earth's north pole has wandered over the millennia and so has pointed to different stars in different eras. Right now it points to Polaris, but one of Draco's stars, Thuban, was the North Star when the pyramids were built.