Some of the most common questions about constellations are about the big and little dippers. But first off, if you ever try to look up a listing of the constellations and look for the big and little dipper, you won't find them in the listing. They're not actually constellations, but they're parts of constellations. So these things are called asterisms, which is a very very well known grouping of starts that resemble something else. So in this case, these groupings of stars resemble dippers. So they're actually, the big dipper is part of the constellation-- so the big dipper is part of the constellation Ursa Major, which is the big bear, and the little dipper is the constellation, part of the constellation Ursa Minor, which is the little bear. So if you ever look toward the Northern Sky, and you're in the northern hemisphere, you'll be able to find these constellations pretty easily. The big dipper is the easier to find because it has by far the brighter starts. But as long as you can find the big dipper, you can use it to find the little dipper as well. And so, in the screen, if I turn on the constellation art, you can see how the seven stars in this area make up the big dipper. Now, the key to finding the little dipper which is given over here, is in the two end stars of the big dipper and they're called the pointer stars. So, if we connect those two stars with a line, and then continue that line across the sky, we'll eventually intersect the last star in the handle of the little dipper, which is also the North Star. So once we have that star, you can find the other stars in the little dipper as well. So to give you an idea of exactly how the ancient Greeks saw these constellations in their minds, we can turn on some artwork as well to give you an idea. So first off, here are the stick drawings again. And we have Ursa Major, the big bear, and Ursa Minor, the little bear. Now if we turn that off and actually put up art work, you can see now what the ancient Greeks saw in their minds. So we have the big bear here with the big dipper handle as a tail and part of the body as the big dipper's bowl. And then for the little bear, you see that the bowl is the body and the tail is the handle of the little dipper.
