Star
Capella
Capella is the bright yellow star of Auriga the charioteer, high in the northern sky. Its name is Latin for the little she-goat, and up close it is really four stars.
Where the name comes from
Capella is Latin for the little she-goat, the goat carried on the shoulder of Auriga, the charioteer. It is one of the brightest stars in the northern sky and sits so far north that for much of the northern hemisphere it never sets, circling overhead all year.
In Greek myth the goat is Amalthea, who nursed the infant Zeus while he was hidden from his father. One of her horns broke off and became the horn of plenty, the cornucopia, which is why Capella has long been linked with nourishment and plenty.
Four stars pretending to be one
To the eye Capella is a single warm yellow point. It is actually two pairs of stars bound together, four suns in all. The two bright ones are giant stars quite like our own Sun grown old, orbiting each other closely, with a fainter pair of red dwarfs keeping them company.
How to find it
Capella is the brightest star in the large pentagon of Auriga, high overhead on winter evenings from the northern hemisphere. In late summer it is one of the first bright stars to rise in the northeast after dark. The catalogue Hali uses gives it a brightness of about magnitude 0.1, which puts it among the half dozen brightest stars in the night sky. From the southern hemisphere it sits low in the north in summer, and from far south it never rises at all.
Capella in a chart
By Hali’s 2026 star positions Capella sits at 22 degrees of the sign Gemini, and the Sun reaches that degree around 13 June each year. Ptolemy gave the bright stars of the charioteer the nature of Mars and Mercury, and Capella is one of the fifteen Behenian stars. Astrologers who use fixed stars read a planet or angle close to it as curiosity, a love of learning and a protective streak toward family and friends.
Common confusions
Capella is not a zodiac star, even though it has a zodiac degree. It sits far north of the Sun’s path, so the Sun, Moon and planets never pass anywhere near it in the sky. Its degree is a projection onto the ecliptic. It is also sometimes mistaken for a planet when it rises low, flashing colours, which is just the atmosphere at work.
Questions
Why does Capella flash different colours?
When it is low in the sky its light passes through a thick layer of moving air, which bends each colour slightly differently and makes it twinkle red, green and blue. High overhead it settles back to a steady yellow.
Does Capella ever set?
Not from far enough north. By Hali's star positions Capella never dips below the horizon anywhere north of about 44 degrees north, which covers most of Europe and Canada.
Sources: Standard stellar references. Hali star positions for 2026, from Yale Bright Star Catalogue coordinates.