Capricornus, the Sea-Goat

Capricornus, the Sea-Goat

Capricornus looks like a large triangle of fairly bright stars. The brightest stars are side-by-side at the triangle’s western tip. Farthest west is Giedi — the goat. Binoculars reveal that this is really two stars. Although the stars appear near each other, they’re really separated by a thousand light-years. The closer of the two is about 115 light-years from Earth, while the other is 10 times farther. Just southeast of Giedi is Dabih, the slaughterer — a name that refers to sacrifices made by ancient Arabs when Capricornus rose at the same time as the Sun. It, too, consists of more than one star.

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