Corona Borealis 8

One plac'd i' th' front above the rest displays
A vigorous light, and darts surprising rays —
The Monument of the forsaken Maid.

Creech's Manilius.

α, 2.4, brilliant white.

Alphecca, the Alphaca of Burritt's Atlas of 1835, was Ulug Beg's Al Nāʽir al Fakkah, the Bright One of the Dish, this Nāʽir being equivalent to the Latin word lucida.
Bayer asserted that the Arabs knew this star as Pupilla, which also appears in the nomenclature of the constellation, with a possible clue to its derivation; but as the word belongs to Lyra, and is certainly not Arabic, we may have to recur to first principles for its origin in the classical Papilla.
Munir, found with Bayer as of the "Babylonians," — by whom he probably intended those gifted in astrology, — is from the Arabs, and synonymous with their Nāʽir. Chilmead gave this as Munic.
In Vergil's Georgics it was Gnosia Stella Coronae.
Gemma and Gemma Coronae were not used in classical times, but are later titles, perhaps from Ovid's gemmasque novem that Vulcan combined with his auro to make Ariadne's Crown; but Spence said, in his Polymetis, that the word should be taken in its original meaning of a Bud, referring to the unopened blossoms and leaves of the floral crown, thus agreeing with the early idea of the figure. The Gema occasionally seen unquestionably is from an early type omission.
Alphecca is the central one of the seven brightest members of the group, and in modern times has been Margarita Coronae, the Pearl of the Crown, occasionally transformed into Saint Marguerite. It marks the loop, or knot, of the ribbon along which are fastened the buds, flowers, or leaves of the wreath shown in early drawings with two long out-streaming ends.
The spectrum is of Secchi's Solar type; and the star is receding from our system at the rate of about twenty miles a second. It has a distant 8th‑magnitude companion, and culminates on the 28th of June.
It marks the radiant point of the Coronids, the meteor shower visible from the 12th of April to the 30th of June.
β, a 4th‑magnitude northwest from Alphecca, is Nusakan in the 2d edition of the Palermo Catalogue, derived from the Masākīn of the constellation.
γ, η, and σ, though unnamed, are all interesting binary stars.