Ursa Major, also known as the Great Bear, is a constellation in the northern sky, whose associated mythology likely dates back into prehistory.

[1] In antiquity, it was one of the original 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD, drawing on earlier works by Greek, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Assyrian astronomers.

Ursa Major is primarily known from the asterism of its main seven stars, which has been called the "Big Dipper", "the Wagon", "Charles's Wain", or "the Plough", among other names.

Ursa Major, along with asterisms it contains or overlaps, is significant to numerous world cultures, often as a symbol of the north.

Ursa Major is visible throughout the year from most of the Northern Hemisphere, and appears circumpolar above the mid-northern latitudes.

Ursa Major covers 1279.66 square degrees or 3.10% of the total sky, making it the third largest constellation.

[3] In 1930, Eugène Delporte set its official International Astronomical Union (IAU) constellation boundaries, defining it as a 28-sided irregular polygon.

[4] Ursa Major borders eight other constellations: Draco to the north and northeast, Boötes to the east, Canes Venatici to the east and southeast, Coma Berenices to the southeast, Leo and Leo Minor to the south, Lynx to the southwest and Camelopardalis to the northwest.

In the context of Ursa Major, they are commonly drawn to represent the hindquarters and tail of the Great Bear.

[16] 47 Ursae Majoris d, discovered in 2010, has an uncertain period, lying between 8907 and 19097 days; it is 1.64 times the mass of Jupiter.

Its bright white color is caused by its higher than usual rate of star formation, which began 100 million years ago after a merger.

The youngest-known galaxy in the visible universe, I Zwicky 18 is about 4 million years old, about one-thousandth the age of the Solar System.

Research conducted in 2003 indicates that its sole planet, HD 80606 b is a future hot Jupiter, modeled to have evolved in a perpendicular orbit around 5 AU from its sun.

However, it is currently on an incredibly eccentric orbit that ranges from approximately one astronomical unit at its apoapsis and six stellar radii at periapsis.

[a] It is mentioned by such poets as Homer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Tennyson and also by Federico Garcia Lorca, in "Song for the Moon".

[31] Ancient Finnish poetry also refers to the constellation, and it features in the painting Starry Night Over the Rhône by Vincent van Gogh.

[37] Using statistical and phylogenetic tools, Julien d'Huy reconstructs the following Palaeolithic state of the story: "There is an animal that is a horned herbivore, especially an elk.

Ovid called Ursa Major the Parrhasian Bear, since Callisto came from Parrhasia in Arcadia, where the story is set.

The Odyssey notes that it is the sole constellation that never sinks below the horizon and "bathes in the Ocean's waves", so it is used as a celestial reference point for navigation.

[42] In Hinduism, The earliest mention of Ursa Major/Big dipper/ Great Bear is known as Saptarshi, each of the stars representing one of the Saptarishis or Seven Sages (Rishis) viz.

One of the few star groups mentioned in the Bible (Job 9:9; 38:32; – Orion and the Pleiades being others), Ursa Major was also pictured as a bear by the Jews.

In China and Japan, the Big Dipper is called the "North Dipper" 北斗 (Chinese: běidǒu, Japanese: hokuto), and in ancient times, each one of the seven stars had a specific name, often coming themselves from ancient China: In Shinto, the seven largest stars of Ursa Major belong to Ame-no-Minakanushi, the oldest and most powerful of all kami.

The Wampanoag people (Algonquian) referred to Ursa Major as "maske", meaning "bear" according to Thomas Morton in The New England Canaan.

In the Sámi languages of Northern Europe, part of the constellation (i.e. the Big Dipper minus Dubhe and Merak, is identified as the bow of the great hunter Fávdna (the star Arcturus).

According to the legend, Fávdna stands ready to fire his Bow every night but hesitates because he might hit Stella Polaris, known as Boahji ("the Rivet"), which would cause the sky to collapse and end the world.

However, bears do not have long tails, and Jewish astronomers considered Alioth, Mizar, and Alkaid instead to be three cubs following their mother, while the Native Americans saw them as three hunters.

[52] Ursa Major is also pictured as the Starry Plough, the Irish flag of Labour, adopted by James Connolly's Irish Citizen Army in 1916, which shows the constellation on a blue background; on the state flag of Alaska; and on the House of Bernadotte's variation of the coat of arms of Sweden.