Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/114

68 Similarly the poet Callimachus who lived about 240 wrote:

The Kids are represented by the three fourth magnitude stars, ε, ζ, and η Aurigæ, which form a small isosceles triangle close to Capella and serve to identify that star. They were sometimes called "the stormy Hædi," and were so much dreaded as presaging the stormy season on the Mediterranean, that their rising early in October evenings was the signal for the closing of navigation.

All classical authors who mentioned the stars, says Allen, alluded to the direful influence of Capella, and a festival, the "Natalis Navigationis, " was held when the days of that influence were past.

Astrologically Capella portended civic and military honours, and wealth.

Some astronomical facts relative to Capella may be of interest. Capella in its spectrum almost exactly resembles the sun. It is a spectroscopic binary, its duplicity being alone revealed by the spectroscope. Its period of revolution is 104 days, and its unseen companion has a spectrum resembling that of Procyon, a star further advanced in the order of development than Capella.

In brightness Capella ranks third of all the stars we see in these latitudes, and fifth of all the stars in the firmament. Its mass is eighteen times that of the sun.

Dr. Elkins gives its parallax, that is its distance from the earth, as approximately thirty-four light years. A light year is the distance light travels in one year, at the terrific speed of 186,000 miles a second.

Capella is receding from the earth at the rate of about fifteen miles a second, and in about 3,000,000 years will appear as a second magnitude star.