What does the Big Dipper mean?

The Big Dipper is one of the symbols of the starry sky in the northern hemisphere. These seven stars look brighter. They look like spoons. And along the direction of the spoon opening, it is easy to find the Polaris, so that you can also identify the direction at night.

Shu Tian, Tianquan, Tianji, Tian Xuan, Yuheng, Kaiyang and Yaoguang are the brightest stars. They are called "Dou Kui" and also known as Xuan Ji. The other three stars are called "barrel handles". The ancients connected them together and called them the Big Dipper. Because the season and the weather are different, the Big Dipper will change.

Shu Tian is also a binary star system, and the mass of companion star Shu Tian B is about 1.6 times that of the sun. If you extend along the extension line of Tian Xuan and Shu Tian to the spoon shape of the Big Dipper, you will soon find a brighter star, that is the Polaris, the star closest to the north celestial pole.

The ancients knew what day it was by observing the direction of the handle of the Big Dipper. The tip of the Big Dipper points to the motionless star on the earth, Polaris. Its position is just on the axis pointing to the North Pole of the Earth, indicating the time and direction for Nightcrawler.

Extended data

1. Among the Big Dipper, Tianquan is the darkest one with an apparent magnitude of 3.3. Tianquan is a trinity system, and the main star Tianquan A has two smaller companion stars.

Although Shu Tian is much younger than the sun, it is already a dying star-a red giant. Shu Tian's core hydrogen fuel has been exhausted, and now it is undergoing helium nuclear fusion, which will lead to the rapid expansion of Shu Tian's volume, increased luminosity and decreased surface temperature.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Big Dipper