Possibly one of the best-known constellations in the northern sky, Ursa Major—or the Great Bear—contains an asterism of seven stars known as the Big Dipper (or, in other countries, the Plough ...

Spica, a star in Virgo, is called “Shinjuboshi” (Pearl star) in Japanese. The Big Dipper asterism is known as “Hishakuboshi” (Dipper star). Hoei Nojiri (1885-1977), a Japanese scholar of ...