Starry-eyed Little Bear

 I discovered something beary interesting the other day!! If you go outside at night, you can see tonnes of stars!! Normally I don't go out at night because it's dark and who knows what is lurking in the bushes ready to eat a little bear but... our backyard seems pretty safe and bushes free (more or less).

Anyhow... Mama told me that there are way more stars out there than I can see from the backyard, so she showed me some pictures online...

 Whoa, that is a lot of stars!! I wonder if that is the Milky Way... we are part of that galaxy you know...

Oh my goodness... this is the Horsehead Nebula!!

That is just beautiful!!! But I asked Mama how come they never name things after little bears... and she told me a story and showed me some pictures...

 See all those stars? Well, we don't see that many when we go outside...

We see something more like this... and Mama said there are things called constellations, stars that seem to form a pattern. There's like Orion (a guy with a sword) and Cassipea (a big W in the sky) and quite a few others...

But the ones Mama showed me are here... do you see them? Just above the trees is the Big Dipper and off the end of Big dipper's ladle is the Little Dipper. The end of Little Dipper's handle is the North Star!

Like that... see them?? Well, Mama said those two constellations have other names as well...

The Big Dipper is called Ursa Major... which is latin for Big Bear!!! Hmmm... I've never seen a bear with such a long tail... maybe that's why he's called Big Bear... his tail is the Big Dipper handle... and the scoop part is in his body... That's kind of a stretch if you ask me!

The most important one though is the Little Dipper which is called Ursa Minor!!! Which means... ta-dah... drum-roll please... Little Bear!!! That's me!!! That's my name!!! Except I do not have such a long tail either...  Heh-heh... I wonder if there are any mouse constellations...