59 Fun Facts About Capricorn

The constellation Capricornus is traditionally drawn as half goat and half what?

Fish. The Greeks inherited the hybrid from Babylonian sky lore, and only then told of a god who grew the tail while hiding in a river to explain it.

Capricorn is the zodiac's tenth sign; which sign is counted first?

Aries comes first because the zodiac is counted from the March equinox. Nine signs later, Capricorn begins exactly at the December solstice.

Which planet rules Capricorn?

Saturn was the slowest planet the ancients could see, and people born under it were thought cold and gloomy, which is where the word 'saturnine' comes from.

Which sign follows Capricorn in the zodiac?

Aquarius starts around January 20. The real Sun runs about a month behind the signs, though, and only crosses into the stars of Aquarius in mid-February.

Capricorn opens a season at the December solstice; which astrological quality does that give it?

Cardinal: the four cardinal signs each begin at a solstice or an equinox, so astrologers cast them as the zodiac's starters and initiators.

Which sign sits opposite Capricorn on the zodiac wheel?

Cancer: the Sun enters the two signs at opposite solstices, in June and December, which is how the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn got their names.

Which holiday is always celebrated while the Sun is in the sign of Capricorn?

New Year's Day. Capricorn season starts at the December solstice, around December 22, so in the north it opens on the year's shortest day and every day after is longer.

In astrology, Capricorn belongs to which of the four elements?

Earth. The elements are dealt round the zodiac in a repeating order of fire, earth, air and water, so the tenth sign lands on earth, like Taurus and Virgo.

Which rock star shared Elvis Presley's January 8 birthday, making them both Capricorns?

David Bowie was born on January 8, 1947, twelve years to the day after Elvis. He released his last album, Blackstar, on his 69th birthday and died two days later.

On the medieval 'zodiac man' chart, Capricorn governs which part of the body?

The knees. Medieval doctors gave each sign a body part, running in order from head to feet, and avoided bleeding a part while the Moon was in its sign.

Among the twelve zodiac constellations, Capricornus holds what distinction?

It is the smallest of the twelve, with under a third of Virgo's area, yet it ranks 40th in size among all 88 constellations, so more than half of them are smaller still.

Capricornus lies in a region of sky nicknamed the Sea; which of these constellations joins it there?

Pisces shares the Sea with a whale, a dolphin, a river and a water carrier, though the sky's swan was left high and dry, far to the north.

Which Roman emperor made Capricorn his emblem and stamped it on his silver coins?

Augustus. Suetonius tells how an astrologer read his birth chart and fell at his feet; the emperor then published his horoscope and put the sign on his coins.

The star name Deneb Algedi, in Capricornus, comes from Arabic words meaning what?

The tail of the goat: 'deneb' is Arabic for tail, which is why the sky has several Denebs, among them the tail of Cygnus the swan and Denebola, the lion's tail in Leo.

What makes Deneb Algedi, a bright star in Capricornus, dim slightly about once a day?

A companion star eclipses it every 24.5 hours, because we happen to see the pair's tight orbit almost edge-on; each dip dims the star by about a fifth of a magnitude.

Alpha Capricorni is a double star; what is the least you need to see its two stars apart?

Just your eyes: the pair is wide enough to split without help, yet the two only line up by chance, one about a hundred light-years away and the other more than six times farther.

What are the Alpha Capricornids?

A meteor shower: it peaks around the end of July and rarely manages more than five meteors an hour, yet skywatchers prize it for its brilliant fireballs.

Which American author wrote Tropic of Capricorn, a novel banned in the United States for two decades?

Henry Miller. The book came out in Paris in 1939 and stayed banned at home until the 1960s, so for years Americans read copies smuggled in from France.

Messier 30, which lies in Capricornus, is what kind of deep-sky object?

A globular cluster: a ball of several hundred thousand stars about 13 billion years old, packed so tightly that some collide and shine again as young-looking 'blue stragglers'.

HCG 87 in Capricornus is a compact group of what?

Galaxies: its three members sit so close that their gravity is reshaping one another, while a small spiral that appears to sit among them is probably a far more distant bystander.

Which planet did Johann Galle discover in 1846 near the edge of Capricornus?

Neptune: Galle found it on his first night of searching, within a degree of where Urbain Le Verrier's sums said an unseen planet must be tugging on Uranus.

Which season begins in the Southern Hemisphere at the December solstice, when the Sun enters Capricorn?

Summer: the solstice that brings the north its shortest day brings the south its longest, so Capricorns in Sydney or Cape Town get midsummer birthdays.

The Tropic of Capricorn marks what?

The southernmost latitude where the Sun can be overhead: it happens at noon on the December solstice, when an upright pole on the line casts no shadow at all.

What sets the latitude of the Tropic of Capricorn?

Earth's axial tilt: the planet leans about 23.4 degrees, and because that lean is slowly easing, the tropic is creeping north toward the equator.

Which scientist, born on Christmas Day in 1642, was a Capricorn?

Isaac Newton has two birthdays: December 25 by the old calendar England still used, and January 4 by the modern one. Both fall in Capricorn.

Which of these countries lies entirely south of the Tropic of Capricorn?

Uruguay lies wholly south of the line. South Africa, despite its name, does not: the tropic clips its northern tip, and it crosses Argentina and Australia too.

Which island nation does the Tropic of Capricorn cross?

Madagascar: the line crosses the island's far south near the port of Toliara, which leaves nearly all of the country inside the tropics.

Which Babylonian water god had as his symbol the hybrid creature that became Capricorn?

Ea, the Sumerians' Enki, was humanity's ally among the gods: in the Babylonian flood story it is his secret warning that lets mankind survive the deluge the other gods send.

Which of these civil rights leaders was a Capricorn?

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929. The US holiday in his honour is the third Monday of January, so it only sometimes lands on his real birthday.

Which pagan midwinter festival is tied to the solstice that opens Capricorn season?

Yule: the Germanic midwinter feast was folded into Christmas as the north converted, which is why 'Yuletide' still means the Christmas season.

Which name belongs to the goat, or its nymph owner, whose milk fed the infant Zeus?

Amalthea, in one telling, was set in the sky as Capella, the 'she-goat' star of Auriga, so the goat that fed Zeus has two claims on the heavens.

In one Greek myth, the broken horn of Zeus's nurse-goat became which famous object?

The cornucopia, or horn of plenty, was said to pour out any food or drink its owner wished for; in North America it survives as the overflowing horn of Thanksgiving tables.

In Greek myth, Pan became the constellation Capricornus after leaping into a river to escape which monster?

Typhon: in one telling the monster cut the sinews from Zeus's hands and feet, and Pan helped Hermes steal them back so that Zeus could win the rematch.

In the tale of how Pan became Capricornus, the gods took animal form to hide from a monster in which land?

Egypt: Hermes became an ibis and Artemis a cat, which is how the Greeks explained why the Egyptians held those animals sacred.

Pan was said to come from which region of Greece, whose name still stands for a rustic paradise?

Arcadia: its hunters were said to flog Pan's statue when they came home empty-handed, a custom the poet Theocritus mentions.

Which English word comes from the name of the Greek god Pan?

Panic: the Greeks blamed Pan's unseen shout for the sudden, groundless terror that seized travellers in lonely places. The other three words are built on 'pan', Greek for 'all'.

Pan's pipes are named after which nymph, who was turned into reeds while fleeing him?

Syrinx: the sound of air stirring the reeds she had become so charmed Pan that he cut them into the first panpipes, called syrinx after her, a word that later gave us 'syringe'.

Which of these deserts does the Tropic of Capricorn cross?

Atacama: the same line also runs through Africa's Kalahari and the deserts of central Australia, because dry air sinking back to the ground in the subtropics leaves a belt of deserts.

Indian astrology pictures Capricorn not as a goat but as a water beast usually identified with which animal?

A crocodile: the same river beast carries the goddess Ganga in Hindu art, and carvings of it guard the gateways of temples across South Asia.

Which Hindu festival marks the Sun's entry into Capricorn each January?

Makar Sankranti is one of the few Hindu festivals set by the Sun, not the Moon, so it falls on January 14 or 15 every year; Gujarat marks it with rooftop kite flying.

Which gemstone is the birthstone for January, when most Capricorns have their birthdays?

Garnet is January's stone, but one traditional list that goes by sign instead of month gives Capricorn the ruby and hands garnet to a different sign.

A now-abandoned constellation beside Capricornus honoured which eighteenth-century invention?

The hot-air balloon: French astronomer Jérôme Lalande proposed Globus Aerostaticus in 1798 to salute the Montgolfier brothers, but later astronomers let it drift out of use.

Which is the only country crossed by both the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn?

Brazil: the Equator runs through the Amazon city of Macapá and the tropic skirts São Paulo, so the two lines lie some 2,600 km apart inside a single country.

Which of these constellations borders Capricornus?

Aquila: Capricornus sits to the south of the eagle's bright star Altair, which stargazers use as a signpost when they go looking for it.

H. A. Rey, who redrew Capricornus to look more like a goat, is best known for creating which character?

Curious George: Rey and his wife fled Paris in 1940 with the monkey's first manuscript in their luggage, and in 1952 he published The Stars, his guide to redrawn constellations.

Capricornus is a Latin translation of the Greek name Aigókerōs; what do both names mean?

Horned goat: the Romans translated the Greek name piece by piece, from caper, goat, and cornu, horn, the same root that gives us 'unicorn'.

Why is Capricornus hard to spot?

Mostly faint stars: only one is brighter than third magnitude, so under city lights the whole figure can vanish.

Capricorn season is in midwinter, but in which month is the constellation best seen in the evening sky?

September: in late January and February the Sun stands in front of Capricornus and hides it in daylight, so the best evening views come about half a year away.

Astrologers pair Capricorn with the horoscope's tenth house, which governs what part of life?

Career and reputation: the tenth house was once called Regnum, the kingdom, so astrologers cast Capricorns as the ambitious ones, set on getting to the top.

Janus, the Roman god who gave Capricorn's main month its name, was shown with two what?

Faces: Janus, the god of doorways and beginnings, looked forward and back at once, and the month sacred to him became the one that opened the Roman year.

Chinese astronomy places Capricornus in which of its four symbolic sky regions?

The Black Tortoise of the North: one of its seven lunar mansions is the Ox, drawn from stars of Capricornus and thought to stand for the animal of the midwinter sacrifice.

Capricornus is one of 48 constellations listed in the Almagest, the great star catalogue of which ancient scholar?

Ptolemy wrote it in Alexandria around AD 150. 'Almagest' comes from its later Arabic title, 'the greatest', and astronomers leaned on it for more than a thousand years.

Due to precession, which constellation holds the Sun at 21st-century December solstices?

Sagittarius: the tropic was named some two thousand years ago, when the solstice Sun still stood in Capricornus. A slow wobble of the planet's axis has since moved it next door, but the old name stuck.

Caper, the Latin for goat in Capricorn's name, also lies behind the name of which bouncy horse-drawn carriage?

Cabriolet: the light carriage was named in French for its goat-like leaps, and Londoners later shortened the word to 'cab', which is why a taxi is still called one.

The 'Tropic' in Tropic of Capricorn comes from a Greek word meaning what?

A turning: the Greeks named these circles for the solstices, the two moments in the year when the Sun seems to halt its seasonal drift and turn back the other way.

Which explorer named Queensland's Cape Capricorn in 1770 because it lay directly under the tropic?

James Cook logged on 25 May 1770 that the point lay 'directly under the Tropic of Capricorn'; the line has crept north since, so the cape now sits just south of it.

Capricorn Records of Macon, Georgia, named for the star sign two of its founders shared, launched which Southern rock group?

The Allman Brothers Band broke through with At Fillmore East in 1971. Founder Phil Walden had first planned a label with Otis Redding, a dream ended by the singer's death in a 1967 plane crash.

In the thriller Capricorn One, what does NASA secretly do with its first crewed Mars landing?

Fakes it in a studio: the astronauts are ordered out of the capsule just before lift-off and made to act out the landing on a set, until a reporter uncovers the hoax.

Which vast Hindu pilgrimage coincides, every twelve years, with the January festival marking the Sun's entry into Capricorn?

Kumbh Mela means 'festival of the sacred pitcher': in Hindu legend, drops of nectar spilled from a pitcher that gods and demons fought over, and pilgrims bathe where they fell to wash away sins.