Even the most familiar astronomical objects have hidden depths if you think of them as mirrors. Look at a familiar star grouping like the Big Dipper, and perhaps you will see its very human face staring back at you.

I could go on forever about the Dipper. I could do so again about the Dipper’s handle. Shoot, I could write a column or two about the bend in the handle. So perhaps I shall.

At that bend is the Dipper’s most famous star, Mizar.

Like most of the brighter stars in the sky, Mizar was named by Arab astronomers. Its name suggests an abdominal covering like a girdle or apron.

Hovering near Mizar is the somewhat fainter Alcor. Its name probably derives from the Arabic Al-jat, “The Rider.” The stars together are often called the Horse and His Rider.

I will write about their scientific attributes next week. For now, let’s look at their histories.

The two stars have been horsing around for a long time. In England, people called bright Alcor “Jack on the Middle Horse.” Mizar is Jack’s starry steed.

Along with the other stars in the handle of the Dipper, Mizar is part of the team of horses that pulls a plough. In fact, the Big Dipper looks as much like a plow as it does a water dipper.

The Romans sometimes called Alcor Eques Stellula, the “Little Starry Horseman.”

The Dutch believed the horseman was Hans Duemken, a legendary wagon driver who spent eternity driving his team of horses across the sky. Again, the stars in the handle form the horses, and the bowl of the Dipper is the wagon.

Because of its proximity to Mizar, Alcor often plays second banana to the brighter star. The Arabs sometimes called Alcor Suha, the “Forgotten One.” The Chinese called it Foo Sing, “Supporting Star.”

In other cultures, Alcor is a victim of celestial circumstance. Far to Mizar’s south is a cluster of six stars enigmatically called the Seven Sisters. So, what happened to the seventh star?

The people of Mongolia say that the missing star migrated far to the north to become the star Alcor. In that story, the other, brighter stars of the Dipper are known as “robber stars,” proud of their brilliance and anxious to add bright stars to their gang.

On one raid, they carried one of the Seven Sisters back to their perch near Polaris, where it must shiver forever in the icy north. Alcor is known as the Cold Star because it had been kidnapped from the southern, warmer region.

Some modern writers believe that the Arabs considered Alcor a test of vision, a celestial eye chart.

However, Alcor isn’t much of a test. Your eyesight must be poor indeed if you can’t spot it on a moderately clear night.

A small telescope reveals a hidden secret — a star between Alcor and Mizar with the strange name of Sidus Ludoviciana, Ludwig’s Star. It was discovered telescopically on Dec. 2, 1722, by Johann Georg Liebknecht, an astronomer at Ludoviciana University, located in Giessen in the German province of Hesse-Darmstadt.

Herr Professor Liebknecht mistook the star for a planet and thought he had made a momentous discovery. He also knew what side of the bread his butter was on.

To curry favor (and perhaps gain a bit of financial patronage), he named the “planet” after Louis V, “Ludwig” to the Germans, the duke of the local province. Note that the university, Ludoviciana, was also named after Ludwig.

Other astronomers soon identified it as a simple star, and stars are common as dirt in the sky. However, the name remains as a testament to the need for poor scientists to receive funding from wealthy and powerful patrons.

Sidus Ludoviciana has one more strange aspect. At 8th magnitude, the star is well below naked-eye visibility. Spotting such a faint star with the unaided eye would take almost superhuman vision.

Despite that fact, the late, great British astronomy writer Sir Patrick Moore suggested that the Arabs meant Sidus Ludoviciana — and not the more obvious Alcor — when they referred to a star near Mizar as a test of vision.

Sorry, Sir Patrick. I don’t think so.

Tom Burns is the former director of the Perkins Observatory in Delaware.

Last week, we took a major step to crack down on fentanyl traffickers, so that we can keep this deadly drug out of Ohio. After months of building bipartisan support, we passed my FEND Off Fentanyl Act and the president signed it into law.

It means we’re now able to impose new, more powerful sanctions targeting the entire fentanyl supply chain — all the way from the chemical suppliers in China, to the cartels in Mexico that traffic the drugs into our country, to the money launderers who help keep them in business.

By going after the billions of dollars that chemical suppliers and drug cartels make in illicit profits, we are targeting them where it hurts the most: their bank accounts. Our bill gives the U.S. government the power to block and freeze the assets of fentanyl traffickers, restrict access to the cartels’ money and property in the United States, and cut cartels off from the U.S. banking system. We are making it much harder and much less profitable to produce fentanyl and bring it into Ohio communities.

Right now, fentanyl is responsible for the vast majority of drug overdose deaths in Ohio and across the country. It’s devastating communities from Youngstown to Defiance to Middletown to Ironton and everywhere in between. I’ve traveled across Ohio meeting with sheriffs and police officers, and they tell us the best way we can support them in this fight is by doing more to keep fentanyl out of the country in the first place. It’s why we worked with Ohio and national law enforcement to write this bill, to build bipartisan support for it, and to get it signed into law.

We introduced the bill last spring with a Republican partner in the Senate. We built a broad coalition, both in Ohio and around the country. We worked every angle to try to get this passed. We called a hearing in our committee, and brought in the performer Jelly Roll to testify about his experiences, and call for passage of our bill. And after a year of work, we got it done.

This bill is going to help save lives. It’s good news for law enforcement and for families on the front lines who have demanded action for years now.

It’s a reminder of what we can accomplish when we put politics aside and work together on the issues that matter most to the communities we serve.

Sherrod Brown is the senior U.S. senator from Ohio.

When the world was in the throes of the pandemic, every individual, organization, business and nonprofit had many difficult decisions to make. We kept hearing the phrase “essential.” Essential workers. Essential services. Organizations were forced to look at their core missions and name their essentials that would be maintained to keep some normalcy of the day-to-day and maintain their mission.

In libraries, the first answer was obvious – books. We worked for a long time to perfect the art of safely loaning materials to our patrons. After we passed that hurdle, we focused on the next issue our patrons missed – community. Many of our patrons find community within the regular programming and classes offered at the library.

Last week, in our “Back to the Basics” series, I talked about storytimes and the essential learning opportunities they provide for children before they begin their K-12 formal education. This week, we’ll take a look at the other end of the lifelong learning spectrum – adult book clubs. When programming finally returned to the Delaware County District Library, the first two types of gatherings that we deemed essential to bring back as quickly as possible were storytimes and book discussion groups.

As I’ve already mentioned, at the heart of book clubs is the opportunity for community and social connection. Individuals from all walks of life gather and give their time to connect with others who share a passion for reading, creating a sense of community and belonging, and opening the door for new friendships along the way.

From a lifelong learning perspective, book clubs encourage the exploration of new ideas, genres, and authors, fueling curiosity and intellectual stimulation. While some groups prefer highly critical discussions and literary analysis of a book, others enjoy sharing their unique perspectives and insights with relation to the text.

The librarians and staff leading the book groups at DCDL have fun choosing their book club titles. Some take a democratic approach, asking each book club member to vote upon their favorite titles for the coming months. Others have an overall sense of their group’s preferences and choose titles on their behalf accordingly. Most book clubs will read a variety of genres and writing styles over the course of the year, with very little ties in common month-to-month.

In May, our book clubs will discuss sci-fi time-travel fiction; domestic fiction; historical fiction; and a contemporary romance. Another book club will wrap up the spring with a generic “What have YOU been reading?” prompt, where readers will bring some titles of books they’ve read outside of the group to share with the regular attendees.

Reading books outside of typical genre preferences can help to broaden perspectives and deepen understanding of unfamiliar subjects. This helps foster empathy and understanding. Book discussions can also be introspective, prompting participants to reflect on their own beliefs, values and experiences, pondering “How would I act/react in this situation?”

Even if someone doesn’t consider themselves a “deep thinker” – book groups are fun and a nice source of stress relief. Sharing laughter, insights and even disagreements with fellow book lovers can make the reading experience more rewarding and memorable.

I’ll give you a sneak preview of some of the titles coming up this June at a library near you. I hope you’ll check out one that intrigues you and join us for a discussion.

• “The Secret Life of Violet Grant” by Beatriz Williams. Discussion takes place Wednesday, June 5 at 11 a.m. in the Ostrander Branch Library. Defying the privilege of her 1960s Fifth Avenue family to pursue a job with a style magazine, recent college graduate Vivian Schuyler discovers a secret about an aunt she never knew who at the dawn of World War I fled her oppressive marriage to pursue an audacious goal.

• “The Death of Vivek Oji” by Akwaeke Emezi. Discussion takes place Thursday, June 6 at 5:30 p.m. virtually and also Thursday, June 11 at 5:30 p.m. in the Liberty Branch Library. Register for the virtual group at www.delawarelibrary.org/event. In the wake of a southeastern Nigerian mother’s discovery of her son’s body on her doorstep, a family struggles to understand the enigmatic nature of a youth shaped by disorienting blackouts, diverse friendships and a cousin’s worldly influence.

• “A Marvellous Light” by Freya Marske. Discussion takes place Wednesday, June 12 at 6 p.m. in the Liberty Branch Library. Robin Blyth is accidentally named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society and is forced to contend with the beauty and danger operating beneath normal reality while uncovering what happened to his predecessor.

• “The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime and a Dangerous Obsession” by Michael Finkel. Discussion takes place Thursday, June 20 at 2 p.m. in the Orange Branch Library. This riveting true story of art, crime, love and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost draws us into the strange and fascinating world of prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser, who stole and kept more than 300 objects until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down.

• “Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy” by Damien Lewis. Discussion takes place Tuesday, June 25 at 1 p.m. in the Delaware Main Library. This story of the world’s richest and most glamorous entertainer looks at her heroic stint during World War II as an Allied spy in occupied France and her efforts to combat Nazism.

If you have a question that you would like to see answered in this column, mail it to Nicole Fowles, Delaware County District Library, 84 E. Winter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call us at 740-362-3861. You can also email your questions by visiting the library’s web site at www.delawarelibrary.org or directly to Nicole at [email protected]. No matter how you contact us, we’re always glad you asked!