First night · 4 minute read
How to find the North Star
Two stars in the Plough point straight to it. Once you can find Polaris, you will never be lost under a clear sky.
Why it matters
Polaris sits almost exactly above the Earth’s north pole, so while every other star wheels around the sky through the night, it stays put. Face it and you are facing north.
It is not the brightest star in the sky, which surprises most people. It is a modest, steady point of light, about as bright as the stars of the Plough.
Finding it
On any clear night from Britain the Plough is above the horizon somewhere, though it may be standing on its handle in autumn or hanging upside down in spring.
- Find the Plough: seven bright stars in the shape of a saucepan, high in the north on spring evenings and low in the north in autumn.
- Look at the two stars that make the front edge of the pan, Merak at the bottom and Dubhe at the top. These are the pointers.
- Follow the line from Merak through Dubhe and keep going for about five times the gap between them.
- The first moderately bright star you reach, on its own in a fairly empty patch of sky, is Polaris.
A bonus: your latitude
The height of Polaris above the horizon, in degrees, equals your latitude. From our roof it stands 51 degrees up, a little over halfway from the horizon to the point overhead. Sailors used exactly this to find their way for centuries.
