Auriga is an ancient constellation and means “charioteer” – a man who drives a chariot or a wagon. Exactly who he is a matter of debate. but he is associated with a goat; to be precise a little goat – Capella in Latin, which is the name of the constellation’s brightest star, and the sixth brightest in the sky. It is a powerful X-ray source and relatively close, as it is only 43 light years away. Six of the constellation’s stars form a hexagon, which appears to be tilted away from us. Five of them are relatively bright, but one, Saclateni, is only fourth magnitude. Curiously, there is a brighter star, Haedus, next to Saclateni, but the constellation is conventionally drawn with the inclusion of Saclateni, not Hadeus.

Auriga has three bright star clusters which appear to be almost in a straight line. The most eastern (leftmost) is Messier 37  [1], which is also the brightest. Despite that, it is very distant, being 4,511 light years from us. Moving west just under four degrees, Messier 36 [2] is slightly less bright and somewhat closer than M37. It is a young cluster, as it is only 25 million years old. Messer 38 [3] is only two degrees to the west of M36 and is the closest to us, being only 3,480 light years distant. It is however by far the dimmest of the three. M37 and M36 are visible to the naked eye in a very dark area, whereas M38 is not. It is also clearly less circular than the other two clusters. They were all discovered by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Batista Hodierna in the mid-seventeenth century; M36 and M38 were re-discovered by the French astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil in 1749. He missed M37, which was recovered by Charles Messier in 1764.

The three M objects below are listed in order of appearance in this text:

Perhaps the most impressive object in Auriga, at least in images, is the Flaming Star Nebula (Caldwell 31, IC 405, SH 2-229) [4] – an emission and reflection nebula illuminated by the variable star AE Aurigae, which is hurling through the gas of the nebula at high speed, producing a shockwave. This sixth magnitude star is a runaway star and did not originate in the Flaming Star Nebula, but was probably expelled two million years ago from the Trapezium Cluster in the Orion Nebula. 

There are two nice double stars in Auriga. Mahasim (Theta Aurigae) has a 2.6 magnitude white primary star and a lilac companion which is magnitude 7.2. They are a tight pair, being only 4.1 arcseconds apart. 14 Aurigae [5] is below the Flaming Star Nebula and is an easier double to split, as the yellow-white primary (mag. 5.0) and the blue secondary (mag. 7.3) are 14.3 arcseconds apart and closer in brightness.

Next to M38, there is a striking asterism called the Smiley Face or the Cheshire Cat (the latter description is more accurate in my opinion) [6], comprised of five sixth- and seventh-magnitude stars, with the fifth-magnitude Phi Aurigae in a slight curve (the “smile”) and, above them, two sixth-magnitude stars which make the “eyes”. The right-hand eye is Struve 698, a wide (31 arcsec) double, with a magnitude 6.7 white primary and an 8.3 blue secondary. Just below Phi Aurigae is the Spider Nebula IC 417), a small emission nebula. It is doubtlessly seeking to catch NGC 1931, an emission and reflection nebula called the Fly Nebula, which is 40 arcminutes apart.