Ursa Major as a celestial reference point for navigation. It is also referred to as the "Wain". One of the few star groups mentioned in the Bible (Job 9:9; 38:32; – Orion and the Pleiades being others), Ursa Major was also pictured as a bear by the Jewish peoples. ("The Bear" was translated as "Arcturus" in the Vulgate and it persisted in the KJV.) In the Finnish language, the asterism is sometimes called with its old Finnish name, Otava. The meaning of the name has been almost forgotten in Modern Finnish; it means a salmon weir. Ancient Finns believed the bear ("Ursus
Ursa Major I Dwarf Ursa Major I Dwarf Ursa Major I Dwarf (UMa I dSph) is a dwarf spheroidal galaxy orbiting the Milky Way galaxy. Its discovery was revealed by Beth Willman et al. in 2005. Being a small dwarf galaxy, it measures only a few thousand light-years in diameter. As of 2006, it is the third least luminous galaxy known (discounting possible dark galaxies such as VIRGOHI21 in the Virgo cluster of galaxies), after the Boötes Dwarf (absolute magnitude −5.7) and the more recently discovered Ursa Major II Dwarf (absolute magnitude −3.8). The absolute magnitude of the galaxy is estimated to be only