Capella is the brightest star in the constellation Auriga, the sixth brightest in the night sky and the third brightest in the northern celestial hemisphere, after Arcturus and Vega. Its name is derived from the diminutive of the Latin feminine capra "goat", hence "little she goat". Capella also bears the Bayer designation Alpha Aurigae (often abbreviated to α Aurigae, α Aur or Alpha Aur). Although it appears to be a single star to the naked eye, it is actually a star system of four stars in two binary pairs. The first pair consists of two bright, type-G giant stars, designated Capella Aa and Capella Ab, in a very tight circular orbit some 0.76 AU apart and a derived orbital period of 104 days. Capella Aa is the brighter of the two at spectral class G8III (G8 Giant) whereas Ab is slightly smaller and of spectral class G0III (G0 Giant). Aa has a calculated mass of 3.05 times that of the Sun and Ab some 2.57 times that of the Sun. These two stars have both exhausted their core hydrogen fuel and become giant stars, though it is unclear exactly what stage they are on the stellar evolutionary pathway. The second pair, around 10,000 astronomical units from the first, consists of two faint, small and relatively cool red dwarfs. They are designated Capella H and Capella L. The stars labelled Capella C through to G and I through to K are actually unrelated stars in the same visual field. The Capella system is relatively close, at only 42.8 light-years (13.1 pc) from Earth.

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