Great Wain

The Big Dipper (US) or Plough (UK) is an asterism consisting of the seven brightest stars of the constellation Ursa Major; six of them are of second magnitude and one, Megrez (δ), of third magnitude. Four define a "bowl" or "body" and three define a "handle" or "head". It is recognized as a distinct grouping in many cultures.

The North Star (Polaris), the current northern pole star and the tip of the handle of the Little Dipper, can be located by extending an imaginary line from Merak (β) through Dubhe (α). This makes it useful in celestial navigation.

The constellation of Ursa Major has been seen as a bear, a wagon, or a ladle. The "bear" tradition is Greek, but apparently the name "bear" has parallels in Siberian or North American traditions.

The name "Bear" is Homeric, and apparently native to Greece, while the "Wain" tradition is Mesopotamian. Book XVIII of Homer's Iliad mentions it as "the Bear, which men also call the Wain". In Latin, these seven stars were known as the "Seven Oxen" (septentriones, from septem triōnēs).Triōnēs is a hapax legomenon, occurring only in a single passage by Varro, where he glosses it as meaning "plough oxen". The derivation is acceptable but the meaning, if Varro is right that it derives from terō ("thresh grain by rubbing"), is surely "threshing oxen": the seven stars wheel around the pole star like oxen on a threshing floor. The name is the origin of septentriōnēs the Latin word for north, from which came the adjective septentrional ("northern") in English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. The classical mythographer identified the "Bear" as the nymph Callisto, changed into a she-bear by Hera, the jealous wife of Zeus.

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