Dippers.

The starry sky serves as a calendar and a story book, as is beautifully illustrated by the Micmac tale of Celestial Bear. In autumn, the hunters finally catch up with the Bear, and it’s said that the blood from the Bear colors the autmn landscape. In another version of the story, Celestial bear hits its nose when coming down to Earth, with its bloody nose giving color to autumn leaves. When Celestial Bear is seen right on the northern horizon on late fall and early winter evenings, it’s a sure sign that the hibernation season is upon us.

The Little Dipper is also an asterism, these stars belonging to the constellation Ursa Minor the Little Bear. In ancient times, the Little Dipper formed the wings of the constellation Draco the Dragon. But when the seafaring Phoenicians met with the Greek astronomer Thales around 600 B.C., they showed him how to use the Little Dipper stars to navigate. Thereby, Thales clipped Draco’s wings, to create a new constellation that gave Greek sailors a new way to steer by the stars.

In Thales’s day, the stars Kochab and Pherkad (rather than Polaris) marked the approximate direction of the north celestial pole – the point in the sky that is directly above the Earth’s North Pole.

To this day, Kochab and Pherkad are still known as the Guardians of the Pole.

Read the rest at EarthSky.