Ursa Minor known as the Little Bear, is a constellation in the Northern Sky. Like the Great Bear, the tail of the Little Bear may be seen as the handle of a ladle, hence the North American name, Little Dipper: seven stars with four in its bowl like its partner the Big Dipper, it was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, remains one of the 88 modern constellations. Ursa Minor has traditionally been important for navigation by mariners, because of Polaris being the north pole star. Polaris, the brightest star in the constellation, is a yellow-white supergiant and the brightest Cepheid variable star in the night sky, ranging from an apparent magnitude of 1.97 to 2.00. Beta Ursae Minoris known as Kochab, is an aging star that has swollen and cooled to become an orange giant with an apparent magnitude of 2.08, only fainter than Polaris. Kochab and magnitude 3 Gamma Ursae Minoris have been called the "guardians of the pole star". Planets have been detected orbiting four including Kochab.

The constellation contains an isolated neutron star—Calvera—and H1504+65, the hottest white dwarf yet discovered, with a surface temperature of 200,000 K. In the Babylonian star catalogues, Ursa Minor was known as the "Wagon of Heaven", it is listed in the MUL. APIN catalogue, compiled around 1000 BC among the "Stars of Enlil"—that is, the northern sky. According to Diogenes Laërtius, citing Callimachus, Thales of Miletus "measured the stars of the Wagon by which the Phoenicians sail". Diogenes identifies these as the constellation of Ursa Minor, which for its reported use by the Phoenicians for navigation at sea were named Phoinikē; the tradition of naming the northern constellations "bears" appears to be genuinely Greek, although Homer refers to just a single "bear". The original "bear" is thus Ursa Major, Ursa Minor was admitted as second, or "Phoenician Bear" only according to Strabo due to a suggestion by Thales, who suggested it as a navigation aid to the Greeks, navigating by Ursa Major.

In classical antiquity, the celestial pole was somewhat closer to Beta Ursae Minoris than to Alpha Ursae Minoris, the entire constellation was taken to indicate the northern direction. Since the medieval period, it has become convenient to use Alpha Ursae Minoris as the north star though it was still several degrees away from the celestial pole, its New Latin name of stella polaris was coined only in the early modern period. The ancient name of the constellation is Cynosura; the origin of this name is unclear. Instead, the mythographic tradition of Catasterismi makes Cynosura the name of an Oread nymph described as a nurse of Zeus, honoured by the god with a place in the sky. There are various proposed explanations for the name Cynosura. One suggestion connects it to the myth of Callisto, with her son Arcas replaced by her dog being placed in the sky by Zeus. Others have suggested that an archaic interpretation of Ursa Major was that of a cow, forming a group with Bootes as herdsman, Ursa Minor as a dog.

George William Cox explained it as a variant of Λυκόσουρα, understood as "wolf's tail" but by him etymologized as "trail, or train, of light". Allen points for comparison. Brown suggested a non-Greek origin of the name. An alternative myth tells of two bears that saved Zeus from his murderous father Cronus by hiding him on Mount Ida. Zeus set them in the sky, but their tails grew long from being swung up into the sky by the god; because Ursa Minor consists of seven stars, the Latin word for "north" is septentrio, from septem and triones, from seven oxen driving a plough, which the seven stars resemble. This name has been attached to the main stars of Ursa Major. In Inuit astronomy, the three brightest stars—Polaris and Pherkad—were known as Nuutuittut "never moving", though the term is more used in the singular to refer to Polaris alone; the Pole Star is too high in the sky at far northern latitudes to be of use in navigation. In Chinese astronomy, the main stars of Ursa Minor are divided between two asterisms: 勾陳 Gòuchén and 北極 Běijí.

Ursa Minor is bordered by Camelopardalis to the west, Draco to the west, Cepheus to the east. Covering 256 square degrees, it ranks 56th of the 88 constellations in size. Ursa Minor is colloquially known in the US as the Little Dipper because its seven brightest stars seem to form the shape of a dipper; the star at the end of the dipper handle. Polaris can be found by following a line through the two stars—Alpha and Beta Ursae Majoris—that form the end of the'bowl' of the Big Dipper, for 30 degrees across the night sky; the four stars constituting the bowl of the Little Dipper are of second, third and fifth magnitudes, provide an easy guide to determining what magnitude stars are visible, useful for city dwellers or testing one's eyesight. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the IAU in 1922, is "UMi"; the official constellation boundaries, as set by Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 2

A milk watcher, milk saver, pot watcher, pot minder, milk guard, or boil over preventer is a cooking utensil placed at the bottom of a pot to prevent boiling over of liquids, the burning of milk. A milk watcher is a disk with a raised rim, is notched on one side; some milk savers are designed so they can be used with the obverse or reverse side facing up, so they appear to have two notches. The interior of the disk is not level. Water vapor is trapped under the Milk Saver causing the notched side to rise up, releasing the water vapor at the same time circulating liquid around the base of the pot and making a rattling noise; the milk watcher was invented by Vincent Hartley in 1938. Boiling water does not boil over; when fats and some other substances are present in boiling water, for example by adding milk or pasta, boiling over can occur. A film forms on the surface of the boiling liquid; the increased viscosity of the liquid causes the steam bubbles to form foam trapped under the film, pushing the film up and over the lip of the pot, boiling over.

A milk watcher disrupts this process by collecting small bubbles of steam into one large bubble and releasing it in a manner which may puncture the surface film. The device rattles when boiling occurs, alerting the cook who may lower the heat setting of the stove. By circulating fluid around the bottom of the pot the device may prevent material from being deposited and burned on the pot's bottom. Media related to Milk watcher at Wikimedia Commons

Acquired by SageNet in 2014, Inc. was a provider of VSAT satellite-based data network services as well as hybrid satellite/terrestrial networks and network management services. Spacenet was headquartered in the Tysons Corner CDP of unincorporated Fairfax County, United States. Spacenet's primary business was providing VSAT and hybrid/terrestrial data network services to government and enterprise customers under the Connexstar brand. Spacenet's enterprise/government VSAT services are used for a wide range of applications such as primary broadband or narrowband networks, disaster recovery/backup networks and multicast file delivery. Beginning in 2006, it partnered with Cisco Systems as the service provider for the Cisco IP VSAT Satellite Network WAN Module in the United States, it held around 25% market share in the enterprise VSAT marketplace, according to the Comsys 2005 industry study. As of 2007, Spacenet equipment and services were in use at about 100,000 enterprise, government and small office sites.

The company was founded in 1981 as Southern Pacific Communications Corporation, a sister company to Sprint, providing satellite links for voice connections. The company was acquired by GTE in 1983 and grew into a worldwide satellite operator and services provider, it went through several acquisitions over the next 15 years, absorbing AT&T Tridom and Contel ASC. GTE Spacenet was sold to General Electric American Communications in 1994. AT&T sold the Tridom Corporation to Spacenet in 1997. In 1998, GE Americom sold Spacenet's North American operations to VSAT terminal manufacturer Gilat Satellite Networks for $227.5 million in stock and spun the satellite assets off into GE Americom. In March 2005, Gilat wholly acquired StarBand, the first two-way consumer satellite ISP in the United States, merged StarBand's operations into Spacenet. Andreas Georghiou became CEO of Spacenet the following year, in 2006. Under Georghiou, Spacenet acquired Chantilly, Virginia-based managed network services provider CICAT Networks in 2011.

In 2012, president and chief operating officer Glenn Katz became CEO of Spacenet, replacing Andreas Georghiou. Following a loss of $2 million on $77 million in revenues in 2012 and faced with uncertainty about future spending by the U. S. Department of Defense, Gilat Satellite Networks sold Spacenet Inc. to Tulsa, Oklahoma-based managed network solutions provider SageNet for $16 million in 2013. SageNet CEO Daryl Woodard replaced Glenn Katz as CEO of the new combined company in 2014, with Brad Wise becoming president. Spacenet was wholly absorbed into SageNet by the end of 2014 and became a brand name for SageNet's satellite services. Spacenet website Spacenet history Spacenet 1-3 satellites GTE Spacenet satellites