[4] With binoculars or a small telescope, Beta Capricorni can be resolved into a binary pair.

The designations of the two constituents as Beta Capricorni A and B, and those of the sub-components - Beta Capricorni Aa, Ab, Ab1, Ab2, Ba and Bb - derive from the convention used by the Washington Multiplicity Catalog (WMC) for multiple star systems, and adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

The WGSN decided to attribute proper names to individual stars rather than entire multiple systems.

[11] Consequently, the Chinese name for Beta Capricorni itself is 牛宿一 (Niú Su yī, English: the First Star of Ox).

Its dominant pair of stars are the orange K-type bright giant Beta Capricorni Aa, with an apparent magnitude of +3.08, and the blue-white B-Type main sequence dwarf Beta Capricorni Ab1 with an apparent magnitude of +7.20.

Its brighter component, Beta Capricorni Ba, has a magnitude of 6.1 and is an A0-giant with 40 times the luminosity of the Sun.