Question

How will Black White Polaris eventually find itself without its companion star? How did this happen?

Answer 1

If you went out on the street and ask people at random what the brightest star in the sky was, odds are a majority would say, "The North Star!" It appears that most people arbitrarily figure that the most important star in the sky should also be the brightest, but in truth, the North Star, which goes by the name of Polaris, is a star of only medium brightness. In terms of overall rank there are quite a few stars brighter than Polaris. In fact, Polaris doesn't even crack the top 40; it's number 48 on the list of brightest stars.

What is the North Star?

The reason Polaris is so important is because the axis of Earth is pointed almost directly at it. During the course of the night, Polaris does not rise or set, but remains in very nearly the same spot above the northern horizon year-round while the other stars circle around it.

So at any hour of the night, at any time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, you can readily find Polaris and it is always found in a due northerly direction. If you were at the North Pole, the North Star would be directly overhead.

That's true now, anyway. But Polaris won't always be the North Star. Read on.

Answer 2

Actually, Polaris, also named alpha Ursa Minoris, is the brightest star in the Little Dipper. It marks the end of the handle. By a twist of luck, it also happens to reside very close to the North Celestial Pole (NCP). This is the point in the sky that all the stars in the north rotate around. It’s not exactly on the NCP, in fact it’s more than a Moons width away, so it scribes out a very small circle in long exposure star trail images like this one below. To the unaided eye it appears that all the stars rotate around Polaris while it remains fixed in one spot. During the last half of the 20th century Polaris’ variations had dropped to approximately 2%. No other Cepheid is known to have gone through this. Astronomers believed they were witnessing the evolution of the star before their very eyes, and that eventually we would see Polaris’ variations snuff out entirely.

Step-by-step explanation: