The Little Bear has few observing targets yet it has been the most important constellation for ages and ages. Polaris, or the North Star, lies within the constellation.
The constellation of Ursa Minor, the Little Bear, also commonly referred to as the Little Dipper, has helped sailors and navigators for thousands of years find the North Celestial Pole and help guide them on their journeys.
In the Northern Hemisphere, Ursa Minor is up all night, every night. Finding the more easily recognizable Big Dipper helps people find the Little Dipper. The last two stars in the bowl of the big dipper can be used as pointer stars. Draw a line through them and extend it north until you hit the next bright star. This is Polaris, or the North Star. This star stays fixed all night long, because the Earth's north pole is pointing directly at this star, so it appears that all the other stars in the sky pivot around this point. For travelers heading north, they simply moved in the direction of the north star. For travelers heading west, they kept the north star off their right side (or starboard side on boats), and so forth. Boy Scouts still learn this helpful rule to orient themselves in the wilderness at night.
Polaris is the end star at the handle of the Little Dipper. It is a magnitude 1.97 star and the brightest in the constellation. There are two other bright stars in Ursa Minor. If you live in a light-polluted site, these three stars may be all you ever see of the Little Dipper, making it hard to correctly identify. The other two bright stars are the stars at the end of the bowl of the Little Dipper. Kochab is a 2.06 magnitude star 126 light-years away. Pherkad is a slightly dimmer 3.0 magnitude star lying 480 light-years away. Check to see how light-polluted your site is by seeing if you can trace the shape of the Little Dipper by spotting the rest of the stars between Polaris and Kochab and Pherkad.
There is one deep-sky object of note in the Little Dipper, and that is only because of its close proximity to the North Celestial Pole. You will need a large telescope and a dark-sky site in order to spot it. Polarissima Borealis, or NGC 3172, is a magnitude 13.6 galaxy about one and a half degrees southeast of Polaris. This round fuzzball is the "most northern" deep-sky object.
In mythology, Arcas was a boy whose mother, Callisto, had been turned into a bear. He met his mother in a forest and was about to shoot her when the god Zeus (Jupiter) turned him into a bear also. They were placed close together in the sky in the Northern Hemisphere.
