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 this time of year. It’s not Polaris the North Star, and it’s certainly not the planets Jupiter in the high southern sky or Venus that’s dazzling our southwest early evening sky.

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 lady goat!

On these late autumn evenings you can easily spot Capella perched brightly in the high eastern sky near the overhead zenith. 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 more than 60 million miles. That’s less than the distance between our own Earth and sun!

Both of these stars are huge, each possibly more than ten million miles in diameter. Astronomers believe that these two behemoth stars orbit each other every hundred 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, the North Star that 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 Butler, we live a little less than halfway between the equator and the North Pole, so Polaris in our sky is permanently fixed a little less than halfway from the northern horizon to the zenith.

Stars and constellations that are close to Polaris in our skies, like the big and little dippers 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 very 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 brief 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. One thing is 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, the Queen of the gods of Mount Olympus and the wife of Zeus, the king of the gods, was certainly not known for her kindness. She was a spoiled egomaniac deity who certainly wouldn’t be nominated 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 out of the heavens of Mount Olympus and sent him plummeting to Earth.

Miraculously, the young lad landed on Earth in a large pile of leaves and wasn’t killed. A nice young couple found him and 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, and was forced to use multiple canes. Despite that, he became quite a craftsman with iron and armor.

One day, while resting at his parent’s 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.

While watching his foster father lead an oxen-pulled 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 a lot 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 night shift had something to do with it.

It 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!