[2] It is separated from the fainter α¹ Capricorni by 0.11° of the sky, a gap just resolvable with the naked eye, similar to Mizar and Alcor.

Based on parallax shift as refined from orbits around the Sun of the Gaia spacecraft at Earth's Lagrange point 2, the star is 101 to 103 light years from the Solar System.

At the age of 1.3 billion years, is currently on the red giant branch[7] and is generating energy through hydrogen fusion along a shell surrounding an inert helium core.

The star is radiating 40 times the solar luminosity from its photosphere at an effective temperature of 5,030 K.[7] The secondary components B and C form a binary system that orbit each other with a period of about 244 years.

[12] As of 2010, the pair lies at an angular separation of 6.6 arc seconds from the primary along a position angle of 196°.