Ursa Minor is one of the most boring but also one of the most important constellations to amateur astronomers. It is boring as there is not much to observe or image beside one of the most well-known star Polaris.
Interesting Objects
What makes Ursa Minor so interesting is that just next to Polaris sits an invisible point of interest: the Northern Celestial Pole.
Have you ever seen any of these long exposure images of the night sky where the stars seen to turn around some point in the sky? It is the Earths rotation around its axis that makes it looks like the sky turns from our point of view. This imaginary point around which the sky turns in the Northern Hemisphere is the Northern Celestial Pole.
The northern celestial pole is important for those (amateur) astronomers that like to take long exposure pictures. We have to align our telescope mounts to follow Earth’s rotation whilst taking such long exposure in order for those images not to show circular these star trails.
How to get there
- Locate the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia in the night sky. Ursa Minor is the constellation in between that looks like a smaller twin to the Big Dipper, like a Little Dipper.