Alpha Ursae Majoris
Alpha Ursae Majoris (Alpha UMa, α Ursae Majoris, α UMa) is the second-brightest star in the constellation of Ursa Major (despite its Bayer designation of "alpha"). It has the traditional name Dubhe, and a rarer name Ak.
Description
Alpha Ursae Majoris forms part of the Big Dipper (also known as the Plough or the Great Bear), and is the northern of the 'pointers' (or 'guards'), the two stars of Ursa Major which point towards Polaris, the North Star. Dubhe is about 123 light years away and is a giant star that has evolved away from the main sequence after consuming the hydrogen at its core. It is a spectroscopic binary with a main sequence companion α UMa B that has a stellar classification of F0V. The companion star orbits at a mean separation of about 23 astronomical units (AU) and completes an orbit every 44.4 years. The yellow giant primary star shows rapid tiny pulsations at many frequencies, its brightness changing by less than a hundredth of a magnitude.
There is another spectroscopic binary 8 arc minutes distant, a 7th magnitude pair showing an F8 spectral type. It is sometimes referred to as Alpha Ursae majoris C, but is separately catalogued as HD 95638.
Hip hop skit
A hip hop skit is a form of sketch comedy that appears on a hip hop album or mixtape, and is usually written and performed by the artists themselves. Skits can appear on albums or mixtapes as individual tracks, or at the beginning or end of a song. Some skits are part of concept albums and contribute to an album's concept. Skits also occasionally appear on albums of other genres.
The hip-hop skit was more or less pioneered by De La Soul and their producer Prince Paul who incorporated many skits on their 1989 debut album 3 Feet High and Rising.
The Hip Hop Skit although dominant throughout the 90s and the early 2000s began to be phased out in the later half of the 2000s and the early 2010s. Reasons for this include the popularity of MP3 as well as the invention of the iPod Shuffle, which could only play tracks in a random order.
Writing for The AV Club, Evan Rytlewski opined that skits may have originally been in vogue because an expanded tracklisting would look more appealing to would be buyers, although he noted that their first inclusion on a De La Soul record was most likely just them being "eccentric".
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