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Caph

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CAPH (Beta Cassiopeiae). At mid second magnitude (2.27) and just barely the second brightest star in Cassiopeia, almost but not quite as bright as Shedar (the Alpha star), Caph, the Beta star, stole its name from the whole "W" of the constellation.

 


Caph is a yellowish F2III-IV giant to subgiant star. The luminosity is 130 times that of the sun. The spectrum indicates that Caph is a binary star with an orbital period of 27 days, but there is little information available on the companion.

When Caph is straight up towards the zenith from Polaris, it is celestial midnight, and this star is a 24-hour clock hand moving counter-clockwise around Polaris.

3 light-years (ly) away from our Sun, Sol, at the northwestern part (23:13:17.0+57:10:6.1, ICRS 2000.0) of Constellation Cassiopeia, the Lady of the Chair -- west of Schedar (Alpha Cassiopeiae) and Caph (Beta Cassiopeiae) and south of the Bubble ...

Named Stars: SHEDIR (Alpha Cas) Caph (Beta Cas) Ruchbah (Delta Cas) Segin (Epsilon Cas) Achird (Eta Cas) Marfak (Theta Cas) Marfak (Mu Cas)
Two open clusters are visible in binoculars within the constellation.

[1959] beta Cassiopeiae or Caph ("palm") is a yellow-white giant with a magnitude of 2.28, classified as a Delta Scuti type variable. It is twice the size of the Sun and 28 times brighter.

Main named stars in Cassiopeia: (Greek alphabet)
Achird (η Cas), Caph (β Cas), Chi (γ Cas), Marfak (θ,μ Cas), Ruchbah (δ Cas), Schedar (α Cas), Segin (Navi, ε Cas).

Beta Cassiopeiae is known as Caph from the Arabic meaning ‘stained hand', as the stars of Cassiopeia were thought by them to represent a hand stained with henna. Delta Cassiopeiae is named Ruchbah, from the Arabic for ‘knee', rukbat.

Named stars: Alpha Cas (Schedir), Beta Cas (Caph/Cheph), Delta Cas (Ruchbar)
Info:
Centaurus (Centaur) ...

The second-brightest, called Caph (beta CAS), is a white star of magnitude 2.4. Cassiopeia contains two open clusters, M52 (magnitude 7.3) and M103 (magnitude 7.4).

Once you found Cassiopeia or the Big Dipper, which is located opposite of the celestial pole, you can easily locate other constellations of the northern hemisphere.
In arabian countries this constellation is called Caph, ...

See also: Cassiopeia, Constellation, Delta, Sun, Sky