Week of June 21-27, 2009 by Dennis Mammana on Creators.com

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Week of June 21-27, 2009

I don't know why, but it seems that every time I'm out under the stars and introduce people to the constellation Draco, the Dragon, I hear chuckles — as if they think I'm making it up.

Now I admit I've done this from time to time — invented constellations and names to help people see their outlines more easily. But this one, I swear, is real. In fact, you should have little trouble finding it if your sky is fairly dark.

Draco is actually a large and ancient constellation that appears nightly in the northern sky. It wraps itself around the North Celestial Pole and remains perpetually above the horizon for much of the United States.

To find Draco, first locate the seven stars of the Big Dipper. You can see then high in the north-northwestern sky this week after dark. Connect these stars with an imaginary line and you'll trace a "bowl" and a bent "handle." British sky watchers know this grouping as a plough; Germans know it as a wagon.

If you follow the two stars at the end of the Big Dipper's bowl — the "pointer stars" — from its base to its top, you'll point directly toward Polaris, the North Star.

From this important star emerges the handle and bowl of the Little Dipper. If you live in or near the lights of a large city, you probably won't be able to see most of this grouping.

It's between these two famous dippers that we can find the dragon. Look for its long string of stars beginning directly between the Big Dipper's "pointer" stars and Polaris. Then follow it upward until it snakes back down toward Polaris, where it makes another sharp turn and heads upward once again.

At the upper end of the long, dragonlike body lie four stars that form the head of Draco, but modern amateur astronomers know this shape as the "lozenge."

Near the opposite end of the dragon — two stars up from its tail — lies a medium-bright star named Thuban. Not coincidentally, this name comes from an Arabic word meaning "dragon."

Because of the 25,800-year wobble of our Earth's axis, this star — and not Polaris — was the North Star some five millennia ago when the Egyptians were building the pyramids.

And before you start chuckling again, I'm not making that up either!

To find out more about Dennis Mammana and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.