Delta Ursae Majoris

Delta Ursae Majoris (Delta UMa, δ Ursae Majoris, δ UMa) is the Bayer designation for a star in the northern circumpolar constellation of Ursa Major. It has the traditional names Megrez /ˈmɛɡrɛz/, and Kaffa. Megrez has an apparent magnitude of +3.3, making it the dimmest of the seven stars in the Big Dipper asterism. Parallax measurements yield a distance estimate of 58.4 light-years (17.9 parsecs) from Earth.

Megrez has 63% more mass of the Sun and is about 1.4 times the Sun's radius. It has a stellar classification of A3 V, which means it is an A-type main sequence star that is generating energy at its core through the nuclear fusion of hydrogen. It shines at 14 times the luminosity of the Sun, with this energy being emitted from its outer envelope at an effective temperature of 9,480 K. This gives it the white hue typical of an A-type star.

This star has an excess emission of infrared radiation, indicating the presence of circumstellar matter. This forms a debris disk around an orbital radius of 16 Astronomical Units from the star. This radius is unusually small for the estimated age of the disk, which may be explained by drag from the Poynting–Robertson effect causing the dust to spiral inward.

It has two faint companions, an 11th magnitude star at an angular separation of 190 arcseconds, and a 10th magnitude star 186 arcseconds away.

Megrez is a marginally outlying member of the Ursa Major moving group, an association of stars that share a common motion through space and likely formed in the same molecular cloud. The space velocity components of Delta Ursae Majoris in the galactic coordinate system are = km s–1.