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 Moving Group group appear to have a common age of about 500 million years. The core of the moving group consists of 14 stars, of which 13 are in the Ursa Major constellation and the other is in the neighboring constellation of Canes Venatici. The following are members of the moving group closest to its center. These stars are all in Ursa Major except where indicated. There is also a "stream" of stars which are likely members of the Ursa Major Moving Group, scattered more widely across the sky (from Cepheus to Triangulum Australe). The bright, nearby star Sirius was long believed