Names of the Stars in the Big Dipper

The easiest constellation to identify in the night sky is The Big Dipper. But why do most of us not know more detail about this set of stars?

The stars that we can see easily and not so easily have been studied for eons by astronomers and the better telescopes we have the clearer the stars have become.

I use this program Stellarium to identify the stars that I see at night, so that I can know which is which and not just say to myself "what a beautiful night time sky with all those stars visible above."

Nah, I'm ready to go more deeper than that, with the aid of technology ... a star map if you will...

This is the sort of that kids should be learning - more than just studying our immediate Solar system. I know when I was in forced education camp during the 1970s and 1980s, we never learned this back in the day... But with computer technology, and the Internet, there is no longer an excuse not to.

Here's The Big Dipper as viewed in Stellarium program.

From the top left part of the "handle" back to the top right of the end of the "pan" are:

1. Alkaid - 100 ly
2. Mizar - 78 ly
3. Alioth - 80 ly
4. Megrez - 81 ly
5. Phad - 83 ly
6. Merak - 79 ly
7. Dubhe - 123 ly

What I note about this set of stars is that two of them, Alkaid and Dubhe, are not 80 light years away but about 20 ly further back from us.

And just out of the frame of this screen capture is Arcturus, 36 ly away. If you can see Alkaid and Mizar, they point to Arcturus which is SW and lower in the sky (from Earth) than them.