The book of stars; being a simple explanation of the stars and their uses to boy life, written to conform to the tests of the Boy scouts . Fig. 4.—Finding the North Star and the Big Dipper. To make sure you have not mistaken some other star forthe North Star it will be a good idea to prove your find. To dothis turn your eyes to the left a little and you will see a group ofseven bright stars fixed in the sky just as the cardboard stars arefixed on the black surface of your chart, and which are shown inFigs. 4 and 5. The Big Dipper.—This group of seven stars is called theBig Dipper because if a
The book of stars; being a simple explanation of the stars and their uses to boy life, written to conform to the tests of the Boy scouts . Fig. 4.—Finding the North Star and the Big Dipper. To make sure you have not mistaken some other star forthe North Star it will be a good idea to prove your find. To dothis turn your eyes to the left a little and you will see a group ofseven bright stars fixed in the sky just as the cardboard stars arefixed on the black surface of your chart, and which are shown inFigs. 4 and 5. The Big Dipper.—This group of seven stars is called theBig Dipper because if a broken line joined all the stars together HOW TO FIND THE NORTH STAR 5 a very good figure of a big dipper would be formed. A group ofstars is called a constellation, and this constellation is shown aswe see it in Fig. 6, and as the ancient shepherds and sailorspictured it in Fig. 7. * NORTH STAR \ HORIZON. Fig. 5.—Line for Sighting the North Star. In England this group of stars, or constellation, is sometimescalled the Plough, for our friends across the pond see in it thelikeness of a plough as well as of a dipper. It is also called theGreat Bear the world over after the ancient name given it, but itrequires some stretch of the imagination to liken it to thatnubbly short-tailed animal. All these fancy names were given this great group of starslong before the birth of Christ and by these names the constella-tion is still familiarly called. Astronomers of the present time 6 THE BOOK OF THE STARS also call this constellation the Great Bear, but they say it inLatin and so it becomes Ursa Major, which is a very high tonedand scholastic sounding word. But the Big Dipper is a namethat is good enough for all ordinary purposes and so well use it.
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