how did the big dipper get its name?
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What, it doesn't look like a dipper to you?  Or do you mean you don't know what a dipper is?  It is the container for water which was typically kept by a well, so you could get yourself a drink.  It had a long handle, and you could dip it into the water.\n\nOther people have called the big dipper other things, you know:  Ursa Major (the Big Bear) and the Plow are the two that come to mind.\n\nI've always wondered how people imagined pictures in the stars like that, because of course the lines connecting the various points of light are arbitrary.  The only one I can "see" in that sense is Orion's belt, because the stars of it are so close together as we see them from earth.  You know, of course, that seen from another perspective, they would not form the same patterns, and people on distant planets around distant stars may very well find us to be the shoulder epulet of a soldier in the sky, or the left eye of a goddess, or anything their imaginations say we are.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter#Historical_observations\n\nJupiter has been known since ancient times and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. The Romans named the planet after the Roman god Jupiter (also called Jove). The astronomical symbol for the planet is a stylized representation of the god's lightning bolt.
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My guess:\n\nIn Roman mythology Pluto is the God of the underworld, which is all cold and dark.  The ninth planet is also cold and dark.  Hence, the name.
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From straight dope: The ridges themselves aren't graced with a name, but the depression between them is. It's a cute one: philtrum, from the Greek philtron, meaning "love charm."
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Polaris -- the North Star or polestar, located very near the north celestial pole.  It is the outermost star in the handle of the Little Dipper.  Polaris will be at its closest to the north celestial pole in the year 2102.  It becomes the polestar every 26,000 years.  Due to the earth’s slow wobble, certain stars take turns being the polestar.  A star called Kochab was the polestar from 1500 BC to AD 300.   (2006 minus 300 equals 1,706 years as the current polestar, with 24,294 to go)
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July 29, 2005: "It's definitely bigger than Pluto." So says Dr. Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology who announced today the discovery of a new planet in the outer solar system.\n\nThe planet, which hasn't been officially named yet, was found by Brown and colleagues using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego. It is currently about 97 times farther from the sun than Earth, or 97 Astronomical Units (AU). For comparison, Pluto is 40 AU from the sun\nThe planet's temporary name is 2003 UB313. A permanent name has been proposed by the discoverers to the International Astronomical Union, and they are awaiting the decision of this body before announcing the name. \nAm I right U_EVERYONE_K
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First find the Big Dipper constellation (Ursa Major) Find the two stars farthest from the dipper handle. Draw an imaginary line from the bottom star through the top star and extend the line outward. The first bright star your imaginary line comes near is the North Star---that's north.\n\nThe website shown has a diagram of the above.
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How The Nickname "Phog" Came About:\nSo where did Forrest Allen's nickname, "Phog," originate. He explained the derivation to a reporter for the University of Kansas school paper.  The student referred to Allen as "Fog", a reference to the foghorn voice he used as a baseball umpire. The word lacked tone, the reporter thought, so he dressed it up by spelling it, "Phog."
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The Bible does not say it was visible to the sheppards, only to the magi or astrologers from the east.  What was it could be hypothesized based on who it attracted and where it led them to.\n\nThe sheppards were invite, but the magi were astrologers who predicted the future based on the movement of the stars.  They went bearing gifts for the children of significant births, such as when Augustus Cesar was born.  \n\nIn studying the Jewish traditions, and seeing the Star, they followed it.  The Star appeared on the night of the birth of Christ, sometime in early fall, so they couldn't have arrived to find a babe in the manger, as mythology states.  All Bibles state that they found a boy in a house.\n\nIt should be noted that the star did not lead them first to Bethlehem, but to Jerusalem, where they met with King Herod, who desired to kill the Christ child.  It has always been funny to me that people say it led them to Bethlaham.  If it had, so many kids would not have been killed.  Herod's advisers told them to check Bethlehem.  The movement of the star led to the death of every first born child under the age of two, so the Star was not of God, but of Satan.  \n\nThere have been many theories about what the star was, but personally, I think it was Satan or one of the fallen angels, appearing in the sky.  Remember, Christ said they can appear as angels of light and this was a time before telescopes.  All they would have known was that it was a bright light in the sky.  There would have been no way to determine its size or distance from the planet.
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sounds like it could have been sirius, in the constellation canis major. this is the brightest star in the northern hemisphere.
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Ursa Major, the big dipper, and Ursa Minor, the little dipper
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The North Star (Polaris) is at the end of the handle of the Little Dipper. The two stars at the end of the Big Dipper's bowl point to it.\n\nMost of the other stars of the Little Dipper are fairly dim, so you could have trouble making it out unless you're well away from urban light pollution. Polaris itself is almost as bright as the brightest stars in the Big Dipper, and should be easy to see. So you're probably just not looking in the right place.
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now i dont know much detail, but according to science, there was what is called the Big Bang.  here, this big, huge gas ball started spinning really really fast and formed the milky way, then, smaller gas balls were formed which are the plantes.  then the moons are astroids lurned into the planet's gravitational force.  (just remember-this is not detailed ONE BIT and i might even be wrong on some of this-but the basic idea is correct.)
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"Hubble" is named after an astronomer from the 20's, Edwin Hubble.  He discovered the fact that the universe is expanding, by measuring the red shifts of distant galaxies.  The Hobble Space Telescope was developed by NASA, and is currently managed by STSI (Space Telescope Science Institute) in Baltimore.
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You spelled the name wrong.\n\nIn Greek mythology, Enceladus was one of the Gigantes, children of Gaia (Earth), who were defeated in battle by Zeus's thunderbolts. Athena cast a spear that knocked Enceladus flat: he became the island of Sicily. In Euripides' Cyclops Silenus claims to have dealt the deathblow, perhaps a vain drunken boast, for he also claims to have sent the Gigantes flying with the braying of his ass.\n\nBuried under Mount Etna by Athena, the volcanic fires were supposed to be the breath of Enceladus, and its eruptions were caused by his rolling his injured side inside the mountain. Thus he fulfills a role similar to that of Typhon. In Greece an earthquake is still sometimes called a "strike of Enceladus".\n\nA moon of Saturn was named after Enceladus, after a suggestion by Herschel's son John Herschel in Results of Astronomical Observations made at the Cape of Good Hope, 1847.\n\nSource: web sites
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Asteroid comes from Greek meaning 'starlike'. You know 'aster' = 'star'. It has nothing to do w/ the bum!!!\n\n;P
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The brightest stars still carry the names they were given to them by (mainly) Arabic astronomers (Aldeberan, Altair, etc).    Many of the other brighter stars are given greek or number representations within the constellation.  Alpha-Centari is the brightest (alpha = 1st letter) in the constellation centarus.  This goes all the way out through numbers like the famous star 51-Peg (the 51st brightest star in Pegasus).\n\nThese days most stars just carry a catologue number, or a particular set of coordinates on the sky, so that anyone can find the star you are talking about.  No star has been given a proper "name" in many centuries.