Guess the Constellation ?
It may look a little similar to a rather famous constellation in the northern sky, but then, the pan is looking more like a jug, and somebody broke the handle!
It is in fact, Ursa Major, but not as you see it today, but as it will be in 100,000 years from now.
Go back 50,000 years ago, and you'll spot the same two stars Alkaid and Dubhe are now in very different locations again, more like a hammer than a big dipper.
Our human lives are too short to really spot the movement of most of the stars, what is known as stellar drift, as the stars move around the galaxy, they follow their own path and that means sometimes we are close by and over time we move away, and new stars join us on our orbit around the centre of the galaxy.
If we look at the distances of these stars, an interesting pattern emerges, apart from Alkaid and Dubhe, all the other stars are moving in the same direction and are almost the same distance from us.
The reason for this is, they were all likely born in the same nebula, and have been moving together. It's not just these stars either, there's a fair number that seem to follow almost identical distance and direction and speed, this is known as the Ursa Major moving cluster.
The two stars that appeared to have moved the most, belong to a different grouping and are moving in a different way from our perspective and will eventually destroy this beautiful asterism in our sky.
But fear not, our brains are hard wired to see shapes where they are not, and no doubt new asterisms will form and entertain future generations.
