Phecda

Its story

Phecda forms one of the four corners of the Big Dipper's bowl in Ursa Major. It is a white star just 83 light-years away, among the closest in the most famous asterism of the northern sky. Its name, from the Arabic «al-fakhdh», means «the thigh» of the bear, and it belongs to a small family of Dipper stars that share a common birthplace: they were born together hundreds of millions of years ago, and still drift across the galaxy in loose formation.