Ursa Minor - the Little Bear

Ursa Minor, the Little Bear, is circumpolar; in fact, the star at the end of the bear’s long tail is Polaris (alpha Ursae Minoris), the pole star around which all other northern hemisphere stars rotate. However, Polaris is not exactly above the North Pole, but it is within 1° of it, and is slowly moving closer to it because of precession. It will be at its closest to the North Pole in 2102 when it will be within 0.5° of it.

Polaris is the only star in the constellation of any note. As well as being the pole star it is a double star (its companion is of 9th magnitude, so well out of naked-eye visibility), and also a variable star whose magnitude varies between 1.02 and 2.07 in just under 4 days.

Ursa Minor has two other variable stars, gamma Ursae Minoris and epsilon Ursae Minoris, but they both exhibit a very small change of magnitude of 0.05 or less.

Common name	Bayer designation	Magnitude
Polaris	alpha	1.96
Kochab	beta	2.06
Pherkad	gamma	3.00
	zeta	4.20
	delta	4.34
	epsilon	4.34
	eta	4.93
	theta	5.00