How far away are the stars in the Big Dipper? What would it look like if we could view it from the side? From the nearest stars?

Here are the distances to the Big Dipper stars that you can see
with your eyes. The distances are in lightyears (ly), which is how far
light can travel in a year. One lightyear is about 9.5 trillion kilometers.
Finding the distances to the stars is a difficult problem, and if you
were to check various sources, you could find slightly different distances
quoted. But this will give you a very good general idea.

150 ly * Alioth 80 ly

60 ly

90 ly

You'll notice that most of the stars are actually about the same distance
from us. In fact, all these stars, except Alcaid and Dubhe, are moving
through space together as a group. If you could view the Big Dipper from
the side, I am not sure what shapes you could see. You would probably
see something like

<------- * * Alcaid
toward Earth *
Megrez * *

the rest of
the stars in
some shape

If you want to explore this further, you can make a scale model of this
constellation by cutting strings of the correct lengths and having
someone hold them all at one point to represent the Earth and placing
the stars at the other end of the strings.

The closest stars to use, Alpha and Proxima Centauri, are "only" 4
lightyears away. This is close enough that Big Dipper would not look
too different. I hope this helps!
Jennifer Johnson

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