ANDROMEDA
AQUARIUS
AQUILA
ARIES
AURIGA
BOOTES
CAMELOPARDALIS
CANCER
CANES VENATICI
CANIS MAJOR
CANIS MINOR
CAPRICORNUS
CASSIOPEIA
CENTAURUS
CEPHEUS
CETUS
COMA BERENICES
CORONA BOREALIS
CORVUS
CRATER
CRUX
CYGNUS
DELPHINUS
DRACO
EQUULEUS
ERIDANUS
GEMINI
HERCULES
HYDRA
LACERTA
LEO
LEO MINOR
LEPUS
LIBRA
LYNX
LYRA
MONOCEROS
OPHIUCHUS
ORION
PEGASUS
PERSEUS
PISCES
SAGITTA
SAGITTARIUS
SCORPIUS
SCUTUM
SERPENS
SEXTANS
TAURUS
URSA MAJOR
URSA MINOR
VIRGO
VULPECULA
With the tip of the bull's horn seemingly piercing his left ankle, Auriga, the charioteer, sits astride the Milky Way.
Capella
Auriga contains the sixth brightest star in the sky: Capella, the goat star. It shines brilliantly at magnitude 0.06, and is the most northerly of all the first magnitude stars. Capella is a G8 main sequence star much like our Sun, except that it has a companion. The companion star is slightly smaller, and slightly hotter, and only 70 million miles away, closer than Earth is to the Sun. The two stars of this binary system revolve around each other, completing one mutual orbit every 104 Earth days.
Capella is called the goat star because of a small triangle of three stars just below her, called The Kids. Throughout antiquity the grouping of stars has been thought of as a mother goat keeping watch over her three kids, hiding in the tall grass of the Milky Way.
M36
Auriga contains three Messier Objects, all spectacular open star clusters, nestled in the heart of the Milky Way.
M36 (NGC 1960) is a small but bright cluster, containing about 60 stars, 4,100 light years from Earth.
M37
M37 (NGC 2099) is the largest and most impressive of the three clusters in Auriga.
It contains about 500 stars, 4,600 light years from Earth.
M38
M38 (NGC 1912) contains over 100 stars, 4,200 light years from Earth.
