Photos of Polaris

Star-seeking method

You can find the Big Dipper first, and then find the North Star through the Big Dipper. The Big Dipper is a part of Ursa major. Graphically, the Big Dipper is located at the back and tail of Ursa Major. Of these seven stars, six are secondary stars and one is tertiary. Through the connection of two stars (Shu Tian and Tian Xuan) in Doukou, Polaris was discovered after extending in the direction of Doukou for about five times.

Because the earth rotates around the earth's axis, Polaris is on the north extension line of the earth's axis, so Polaris is motionless in the sky at night, with its head tilted to the north, so it can indicate the north. Although the tilt direction of the earth's axis will change because the earth revolves around the sun all year round, the distance between Polaris and the earth is much larger than the radius of the earth's revolution, so the change of the earth's axis caused by the earth's revolution can be ignored.

So all the year round, we see that the position of Polaris in the sky seems to be motionless in the north. In fact, we just can't observe the subtle changes with the naked eye, and we feel that the earth axis always points to Polaris.