HERE is the weekly Skywatch column from Stuart Atkinson.

Whenever I give an astronomy talk and I ask the audience how many of them think the "Pole Star" is the brightest in the sky around half of them put their hands up.

In fact it's not. Polaris is only the 50th brightest star in the sky, much fainter than Sirius, which actually is the brightest.

Why do people make this mistake?

It goes back years and years, and is probably the fault of generations of artists, writers and poets who have passed on, through their work, the romantic but totally wrong myth that the Pole Star outshines every other.

Astronomers will tell you that the only thing special or noteworthy about Polaris is that because it is positioned almost directly above the Earth's northern polar axis it is the one star in the northern sky that stays still all through the night and all through the year; every other star and constellation appears to wheel around it -

In fact, that's not strictly true either.

If you aim a camera at Polaris and take a long time exposure you'll see it shows up as a tiny circle.

This is because it's not precisely on the pole, but slightly offset from it.

And Polaris hasn't always been the Pole Star either.

Because the Earth wobbles on its axis over millions of years different stars take turns as the Pole Star. If you jumped in the Tardis and went far back into the past, or into the future, you'd see a totally different star as the "pole star".

If you want to find the current Pole Star it's easy - just look to the NE after dark and look for the saucepan-shaped "Big Dipper" balanced on the tip of its curved handle.

Use the two stars at the very top, furthest away from the horizon, as pointers, and look a short distance away to their left, where you'll see a brightish star shining on its own. That's Polaris.