61 Ursae Majoris was the primary of its planetary system. A planet in this system, Archer IV, was named for Jonathan Archer, the captain of the first Earth starship – Enterprise NX-01 – to chart the star close up. (ENT: "Strange New World", "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II", display graphic)
Upon his return to Earth following the Xindi incident, Archer pointed out the star in Earth's sky to Hernandez, to the left of the star Polaris. (ENT: "Home")
Background information
The star was designated in Archer's bio screen aboard the USS Defiant and in the script of "Home", both of which were written by Mike Sussman. He stated, in a podcast commentary he once recorded, that the biographical data was not intended to be legible to the audience, and because of that, the bio and other displays like it should be considered a form of "soft canon" overridden by the character's statements. [1](X) In the "Home" script, 61 Ursae Majoris was noted as being near "the Big Dipper".
Star Trek: Star Charts (p. 60, "United Federation of Planets I") falsely identifies the name of the planet orbiting 61 Ursae Majoris in "Strange New World" as Loracus Prime. The more recent Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library ("Federation Historical Highlights, 2161-2386") corrected this error. The system was identified as Archer1. Both sources locate the 61 Ursae Major system in the Beta Quadrant. In the late 24th century, this was a Federation system.
In Larry Niven's Known Space, 61 Ursae Majoris was the central star of the Kzinti homeworld, the planet Kzin.