Ursa Minor The tradition of naming the northern constellations "bears" appears to be genuinely Greek, although Homer refers to just a single "bear". The original "bear" is thus Ursa Major, and Ursa Minor was admitted as second, or "Phoenician Bear" (Ursa Phoenicia, hence Φοινίκη, Phoenice) only later, according to Strabo (I.1.6, C3) due to a suggestion by Thales, who suggested it as a navigation aid to the Greeks, who had been navigating by Ursa Major. In classical antiquity, the celestial pole was somewhat closer to Beta Ursae Minoris than to Alpha Ursae Minoris, and the entire constellation was taken to indicate the
Ursa Major I Dwarf −6.75, meaning that it is less luminous than some stars, like Deneb in the Milky Way. It is comparable in luminosity to Rigel. It has been described as similar to the Sextans Dwarf Galaxy. Both galaxies are ancient and metal-deficient. It estimated to be located at a distance of about 330,000 light-years (100 kpc) from the Earth. That is about twice the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud; the largest and most luminous satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. There was another object called "Ursa Major Dwarf", discovered by Edwin Hubble in 1949. It was designated as Palomar 4. Due