What is the official name of the star located closest to the North Celestial Pole?

The story behind the answer

Polaris, also called the North Star (Alpha Ursae Minoris), sits closest to the North Celestial Pole, so it appears almost fixed in the northern sky while other stars seem to circle around it. Navigators use it because its altitude above the horizon roughly equals your latitude in the Northern Hemisphere. The other choices aren’t the current pole star: Eridanus is a constellation, and Gamma Cephei and Iota Cephei are future “North Stars.”

Fun context: Earth’s axis wobbles in a 26,000-year cycle (axial precession), so the pole slowly points to different stars over millennia. Ancient Egyptians used Thuban; in about 4,000 years, Gamma Cephei will take the role. Bonus memory hook: “Polaris” sounds like “polar,” reminding you it marks the pole. It’s also a multiple-star system and a Cepheid variable, a type of star crucial for measuring cosmic distances.