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path around its axis, the North Star. It cannot be seen unless one faces the
north, while Orion swings high across the southern sky.

Stars, of course, rise and set like the sun, moving from east to
west, and their position depends upon the season of year and time of
night. The Big Dipper, for example, is sometimes soon descending in the
northwest, or is down to the horizon, its shape flattened and obscured by
haze. Again, it is swinging up the Northeast, or parading high above the
North Star.


The Northern Sky

The Big Dipper, nearly always visible when one looks at the sky
in the north, consists of a group of seven stars that resemble a dipper,
four of them outlining the shape of a bowl, and three a long, curving
handle. To find the North Star, draw an imaginary line through the
"pointers," two stars of the Dipper's Cup, opposite the "handle," and
extend it north. It will reach the isolated, not especially bright North
Star, or Polaris.

Extend the line in the opposite direction and the first
conspicuously bright point of light will be Regulus. White and glittering,
this star was known to the early Greeks as "King of the Sky." One of the
brightest stars, is creamy-white Capella, the second brightest northern
star, a part of the shield-shaped constellation of Auriga. It is at the outer
rim of the stars circling the North Star, and sinks below the horizon about
four out of every twenty-four hours. On the side of the North Star