Do you know the name of the brightest nighttime star we see most often?
Yes, this is a trick question. It’s not Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky that we see in the dead of winter; it’s not Polaris the North Star; and it’s certainly not Venus that’s dazzling our western skies in the evenings right now, since Venus is a planet and not a star.
No, the brightest star we see most often in the skies is Capella, which is an Arabic name that translates to English as “she goat.” Our bright star is a nanny goat.
On these late autumn evenings you can easily spot Capella perched brightly in the east-northeast sky. You can’t miss it. It’s the brightest star in that neighborhood of the sky.
Astronomically, Capella may seem like one bright star, but it’s actually two huge stars separated by just over 60 million miles. That’s less than the distance between our own Earth and sun.
Both stars are huge, each possibly over 10 million miles in diameter. Astronomers believe that these behemoth stars orbit each other every 100 days or so.
Capella is the fourth brightest star we can see throughout the course of the year, and the brightest star we see most often in the Northern Hemisphere.
That’s because it’s the closest bright star to Polaris, which marks the position of the north celestial pole. Everything we see in the sky — the sun, moon, planets and stars — all appear to rotate once around Polaris every 24 hours.
That’s because the North Star shines directly above the Earth’s North Pole. Here in northwest Washington, we live about halfway between the North Pole and the Earth’s equator, so Polaris, in our sky, is permanently fixed about 45 degrees directly above the northern horizon, halfway from the northern horizon to the zenith.
Stars and constellations that are close to Polaris, such as the Big Dipper, Little Dipper and the W-shaped Cassiopeia, are always above the horizon in a tight circle around the North Star. They are called circumpolar stars, and we see them night after night.
Capella, the goat star, is not quite close enough to Polaris to be considered a circumpolar star, but it’s close. Because of its northwardly position, Capella is in our evening skies from late August until just about mid-June, and throughout the year it never goes a complete night without making a brilliant appearance.
Capella is also the brightest star in the constellation Auriga, the chariot driver, one of the strangest constellations in the skies. It basically looks like a lopsided pentagon with Capella at one of the corners. As I say in my stargazing parties, I would have liked to have been at the party where they went outside, looked up at the stars and dreamed up that constellation name. One thing for sure, there were massive hangovers the next day.
As it is with all constellations, there are lots of stories and mythology about how certain constellations got up in the sky, depending on the local culture.
One of the Greek mythology tales is a good lesson in how tragedy is defeated by brains and determination.
Hera, queen of the gods of Mount Olympus and the wife of Zeus, was certainly not known for her kindness. She was a spoiled egomaniacal deity who certainly wouldn’t get a nomination for mother of the year. Get this — she bore a son who was born lame, and instead of giving him motherly love and care, she tossed him off Mount Olympus and sent him plummeting to Earth.
Miraculously, the lad was found by a nice young couple who took him into their home and adopted him. They gave him the name of Hephaestus and raised him to be a fine young man.
He wasn’t able to get around very well with his handicap, but he became quite a craftsman with iron and armor.
One day when he was resting at his parents’ farm he was in a bit of a funk about not being able to get around as well as he wished. He wanted to be able to travel all around the countryside and see as much of the world as he could.
Watching his foster father lead oxen pulling a plow, he had a flash of brilliance. Why not attach wheels to a container and have a horse or a team of horses pull you around in it? He invented the very first horse-drawn chariot. Not only would he be able to get around better and faster, but he helped all of humanity do the same.
The gods of Mount Olympus, with the exception of his awful mother, Hera, were in awe of Hephaestus and placed a chariot among the stars in his honor, with Hephaestus at the reins.
No one really knows for sure how Capella, the brightest star in Auriga, got to be known as a goat star, but it’s suspected that shepherds pulling the nightshift had something to do with it. In fact, there are three faint but distinct stars that form a triangle right next to Capella that are known as “the kids.” Capella is a mama goat.
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and author of the book, “Washington Starwatch,” available at bookstores and at his Web site www.lynchandthestars.com.
The Everett Astronomical Society welcomes new members and puts on public star parties. The Web site is www.everettastro.org.
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