This video shows how the Ursa Major constellation changes smoothly during two million years. You can see how it looked one million years ago, how it looks now and how it will look one million years later.
Five of the seven stars of the Ursa Major Big Dipper move in the star stream in one direction: Mizar, Alioth, Megrez, Phecda, Merak. The brightest of these five stars – the Alioth star – is in the center of the screen throughout the video. The other two stars of Big Dipper are moving in the opposite direction: Dubhe and Benetnasch.
At the very beginning of the video, the location of the stars corresponds to how the starry sky looked like one million years ago. Approximately in the middle of the video, which corresponds to the present time, all seven stars meet, forming the outlines of the familiar Big Dipper of the Ursa Major constellation. Then the video takes us further into the future, and the shape of Big Dipper is distorted more and more. At the very end of the video, the location of the stars corresponds to how the starry sky will look in the vicinity of the Ursa Major constellation in one million years.
The video was made using own software. Information about the stars is taken from the Hipparcos catalogue and corrected by data from the Gaia DR3 catalogue.
The track ‘Ancient Whispers’ by P C III sounds in this video. This track was not changed. Link:
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/P_C_III/diodata/ancient-whispers-1/
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
