It is a celestial accident that Polaris is located over the earth’s Geographic North Pole (there is no comparable South Pole star). It seems to sit precisely on an extension of the earth’s axis; and it has shifted its position so little in our time we think of it as a constant. It nearly is; it has been steady enough to anchor routes of navigation for people in the Northern Hemisphere for as long as history records. Astronomers call the mathematical point in the sky above the North Pole the North Celestial Pole, and Polaris is within a degree of it.
