They found that by connecting the stars as if they were dots, patterns emerged that resembled animals, people, and things.

Alioth belongs to the Ursa Major Moving Group (Collinder 285), a group of stars that includes most of the brightest stars in the constellation Ursa Major. The brightest star in the constellation is Alioth, Epsilon Ursae Majoris, with an apparent magnitude of 1.In European star charts, the constellation was visualized with the 'square' of the Big Dipper forming the bear's body and the chain of stars forming the Dipper's "handle" as a long tail. There are 88 constellations and 56 of them can be seen from the UK but not all of them are visible all year round. This guide, created in partnership with the National Space Centre, will help you and your child find and recognise some of the most famous constellations in our night sky.

This is a group of three quite bright stars that are roughly directly above an observer in the UK during summer. Its brightest stars form the Big Dipper asterism, one of the most recognizable shapes in the sky, also known as the Plough. Scientific American, November 2006, reviewed at The Origin of the Greek Constellations Archived 2017-04-01 at the Wayback Machine; Yuri Berezkin, The cosmic hunt: variants of a Siberian – North-American myth Archived 2015-05-04 at the Wayback Machine. Another asterism representing three pairs of footprints of a leaping gazelle [13] is recognized in Arab culture.After a stint working as a cook, Alexis moved to London with her small, second-hand printing press and began print-making again. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781 and Charles Messier subsequently included it in his catalogue. The other three Messier objects are referred to as Messier 40 (M40, Winnecke 4), Messier 108 (M108, NGC 3556), and Messier 109 (M109, NGC 3992).