Capricornus
Origin
Capricornus is one of the constellations of the zodiac, which traces the apparent path of the Sun across the sky and is visible from much of the northern and southern hemispheres. It is one of the 48 constellations cataloged by the second-century astronomer Ptolemy. Capricornus is located in a portion of the sky sometimes called ‘The Sea’ because there is a concentration of constellations with water themes.
Capricornus is Latin for ‘horned goat’ although it is commonly referred to as a ‘sea goat’, a mythical half-fish, half-goat creature.
Bright Stars
Capricornus is a faint constellation with only one star brighter than 3rd magnitude. The brightest star is Deneb Algedi, a 2.9-magnitude star located about 39 light-years from Earth. Deneb Algedi is the tail of the goat and Deneb is the Arabic word for tail.
Dabih is a popular double star for amateur astronomers. The primary is a yellow star shining at magnitude 3.1 located 340 light-years from Earth and the companion is a fainter blue-white star at magnitude 6.1. The pair is easily split with binoculars.
Nashira is a magnitude-3.7 white giant about 139 light-years distant.
Photo of the constellation Capricornus produced by NOIRLab in collaboration with Eckhard Slawik, a German astrophotographer.
The annotations are from a standardized set of 88 western IAU constellations and stick figures from Sky & Telescope. Please find here a non-annotated version of the image.
Credit: E. Slawik/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Zamani
Latin name
English name
Capricornus
Pronunciation
CAP-rih-CORN-us
Abbreviation
Cap
Notable Objects
Messier 30 is a globular cluster that can be found in Capricornus. Shining at magnitude 7.5, it is a nice object to view through a small telescope; it also shows up in 10x50 binoculars. Messier 30 is about 27,000 light-years distant and has a mass of about 160,000 solar masses.
