# Alphecca in the birth chart: the jewel of the Northern Crown > Alphecca in astrology: the bright star of Corona Borealis in the first half of Scorpio, its Venus and Mercury nature after Ptolemy, and how it is read. URL: https://kb.astroway.info/en/fixed-stars/alphecca Alphecca, also called Gemma, is the bright star at the centre of Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown. In the tropical zodiac it stands in the first half of Scorpio. It lies far north of the ecliptic, so its zodiac degree is a projection rather than a place the planets pass through. Ptolemy gives the star of the Crown the nature of Venus and Mercury, the same pairing he uses for [Vega](/en/fixed-stars/vega) and [Fomalhaut](/en/fixed-stars/fomalhaut). ## In the sky Corona Borealis is a small arc of stars east of [Arcturus](/en/fixed-stars/arcturus), a circle left open on one side. Alphecca is its brightest star and stands near the middle of the arc. Alphecca is about 75 light-years away. It is a white star of class A0, still fusing hydrogen in its core like Vega or Sirius, with a surface temperature of about 10,000 kelvin and some 67 times the Sun's luminosity. It is also a binary. A smaller companion, a yellow star of class G5 much like the Sun, orbits it every 17.36 days at about half of Mercury's distance from the Sun. Once every orbit the companion passes in front of the bright star and dims it, but only by about a tenth of a magnitude, too little to notice with the eye. The bright star is surrounded by a dusty disk, and the companion is a strong source of X-rays, a sign of a young and magnetically active star. Alphecca belongs to the Ursa Major stream, a loose group of stars moving through space together that also includes most of the Big Dipper and Sirius. Its latitude from the ecliptic is about 44° north. At that distance a conjunction by zodiac degree only means that the star and the planet share a longitude; in the sky they are far apart. For such stars some astrologers prefer [parans](/en/fixed-stars#parans). ## Finding it from Ukraine The Crown is a star of late spring and summer evenings. The easiest guide is Arcturus, the bright orange star of Boötes: to its east (left, when facing south) lies the small half-circle of the Crown, with Alphecca as its brightest star. From the latitude of Kyiv Alphecca climbs to about 66° above the southern horizon, nearly three quarters of the way to the zenith. It stands high in the evening sky from May to August. ## The name The name comes from Arabic. Richard Hinckley Allen, in *Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning* (1899), explains that the Arabs called the figure al-Fakka, "the Dish", and the star its "bright one"; Alphecca is the shortened form. He adds that the Persians saw it as a broken platter, because the circle is not closed. The astronomer James Kaler also traces the Arabic name to a root that alludes to this "broken" circle. The second name, Gemma, Latin for "jewel" or "bud", is late and not classical. Alphecca is the official name approved by the International Astronomical Union in 2016. The Greeks and Romans saw in the figure the crown of Ariadne. In the version Allen retells, it was the crown given to her by Theseus, or by Venus, that was set among the stars; Ovid has Ariadne herself become the constellation. ## Nature according to Ptolemy In the first book of the *Tetrabiblos*, among the stars north of the zodiac, Ptolemy says that "the star in Corona Septentrionalis" is of the nature of Venus and Mercury. He means the bright star of the Crown, Alphecca. Venus stands for attraction, beauty, pleasure, harmony and the wish to be liked. Mercury stands for words, ideas, skill and exchange. Together they describe grace in expression: taste joined to cleverness, charm that works through speech and craft. Read this way, the pair suggests a feeling for the arts, refinement and a gift for making oneself welcome. Neither planet is harsh, and the formula has no Mars or Saturn in it, so the star is read as one of the gentler ones. The overview explains [how these planetary formulas are read](/en/fixed-stars#nature). ## After Ptolemy Alphecca is the twelfth of the fifteen Behenian stars in Cornelius Agrippa's *Three Books of Occult Philosophy*. In the first book (chapter 32) it appears as "Elpheia", ruling topaz among stones and rosemary, trefoil and ivy among plants. In the second book (chapter 47), where the name is spelled "Elphrya", Agrippa describes its talisman as the image of a hen or of a man crowned, said to bring "the good will and love of men" and to give chastity. In the second book (chapter 31) Agrippa lists the same star as "Elepheia" but gives it the nature of Venus and Mars, so his reading differs from Ptolemy's Venus and Mercury. Allen notes more generally that the stars of the Crown were favoured by astrologers. ## Conjunctions with planets and angles Alphecca is used by [conjunction](/en/aspects/conjunction), with an orb of about 1° ([more on the orb](/en/fixed-stars#orb)). Because the star lies so far from the ecliptic, many astrologers give a longitude conjunction less weight than one with a star on the Sun's path. Two typical cases show how tradition reads it: - **Alphecca with Venus.** A star of Venus's nature on Venus doubles the planet's themes: taste, charm, love of beauty and of company. The Mercury share points them towards expression, so astrologers read it as talent in the arts, design or words, and as ease in winning people over. - **Alphecca on the MC.** On the Midheaven the star's colour moves into career and reputation. Read through Venus and Mercury, it suggests work where taste and language count: art, writing, diplomacy, anything that depends on being well received. A star adds a shade; it does not replace the planet. The condition of Venus, Mercury and the MC in the chart still decides how much of this shows.