Capella

Uncommon card · No. 95447

Capella is the brightest star in the northern constellation of Auriga. It has the Bayer designation α Aurigae, which is Latinised to Alpha Aurigae and abbreviated Alpha Aur or α Aur. Capella is the sixth-brightest star in the night sky, and the third-brightest in the northern celestial hemisphere after Arcturus and Vega. A prominent object in the northern sky, it is circumpolar to observers north of 44°N. Its name meaning "little goat" in Latin, Capella depicted the goat Amalthea that suckled Zeus in classical mythology. Capella is relatively close, at 42.9 light-years (13.2 parsecs). It is one of the brightest X-ray sources in the sky, thought to come primarily from the corona of Capella Aa. Although it appears to be a single star to the naked eye, Capella is actually a quadruple star system consisting of two pairs of binary stars: the primary pair Capella Aa and Capella Ab, and the secondary pair Capella H and Capella L. The primaries are two bright-yellow giant stars, both of which are...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Auriga_constellation_map.png: Torsten Bronger derivative work: Kxx (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0