Megrez
star in the constellation Ursa Major
Megrez , also called Delta Ursae Majoris (δ Ursae Majoris, abbreviated Delta UMa, δ UMa), is a star in the northern constellation of Ursa Major. With an apparent magnitude of +3.3, it is the dimmest of the seven stars in the Big Dipper asterism. Parallax measurements yield a distance estimate of 80.5 light-years (24.7 parsecs) from the Sun.
Stellar properties
Megrez has two times more mass than the Sun and is about 23 times more luminous. It has a stellar classification of A3 V, which means it is an A-type main sequence star that is generating energy at its core through the nuclear fusion of hydrogen. It rotates rapidly, taking 3.1 hours to complete a rotation across its equator, causing Megrez to have an oblate shape and hotter temperatures at the poles due to gravity darkening.
This star has an excess emission of infrared radiation, indicating the presence of circumstellar matter. This forms a debris disk around an orbital radius of 16 astronomical units from the star. This radius is unusually small for the estimated age of the disk, which may be explained by drag from the Poynting–Robertson effect causing the dust to spiral inward.
It has two faint companions, a 10th magnitude star and an 11th magnitude star, both at an angular separation of two arcminutes from the primary.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Megrez” as star in the constellation Ursa Major. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as star in the constellation Ursa Major. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q850779. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Megrez” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.