POLARIS or NORTH STAR or POLE STAR The famous Pole Star (also called Polaris or North Star) lies less than one degree from the Northern Celestial Pole, and so always lies north from an Earth-bound observer's point of view. Pole Star can be found by locating the Big Dipper (Ursa Major or Big Bear - the stars shown in blue) in the sky. The Big Dipper is a cluster of stars consisting of 7 bright stars, forming a dipper, a small pot with a long handle. Astronomers name it "Ursa Major," Latin for "the big bear." The piture shows how the shape of Big Dipper looks like (7 blue stars on left in the picture), so that you can locate that in the sky. Once you locate the Big Dipper, imagine a line connecting the two stars at the front of the "dipper" (last 2 stars), continue a line from those 2 stars to the side where the dipper is "open" to a distance 5 times that between the 2 stars, and you will arrive at (or very close to) the "POLE STAR" which is a faint star. Its altitude (the angle it makes with the horizon) is always equal to the latitude of the observer. Since the altitude of the Pole star is always equal to the observer's latitude, if you know your latitude, that's how high from the horizon the pole star will be. So, if you are at Equator, the Pole Star will be zero degrees above horizon.