Does the North Star ever move relative to Earth … or relative to anything for that matter?
The North Star, also known as Polaris, is a star like any other. All the stars we see in our night sky are members of the Milky Way galaxy. All of these stars are moving through space, but they’re so far away we can’t easily see them move relative to each other. That’s why the stars appear “fixed” relative to each other. And it’s why – for the most part – we see the same constellations as our ancestors. But Earth spins underneath the stars once a day. Earth’s spin causes the stars to rise in the east and set in the west, just as the sun does. When you’re talking about this kind of movement, the North Star is a special case. It lies almost exactly above Earth’s northern axis. So Polaris is like the hub of a wheel. It doesn’t rise or set – instead, it appears to stay put in the northern sky. That’s how the eye sees it, anyway. The North Star is really offset a little from celestial north. If you took its picture, you’d find that it makes its own little circle around true north every day.
