Diagram caption: The constellation Auriga with its bright stars and surrounding constellations. Auriga is surrounded by (going clockwise from the top): Camelopardalis, Perseus, Taurus, Gemini and Lynx. Capella, the brightest star in Auriga, is the sixth brightest star in the night sky.

As a northern constellation, Auriga is visible from the whole of the northern hemisphere at some point in the year. The whole of the constellation is visible to equatorial regions of the southern hemisphere with parts of it visible to temperate southern regions. The whole constellation is circumpolar from arctic regions. The constellation is best viewed in the evening in the late northern hemisphere winter and late southern hemisphere summer.

Auriga lies in the plane of the Milky Way and thus hosts a number of open clusters. Of these M36, M37 and M38 are marked on this diagram with yellow circles. IC 405, also known as the flaming star nebula, is marked here with a green square.

The y-axis of this diagram is in degrees of declination with north as up and the x-axis is in hours of right ascension with east to the left. The sizes of the stars marked here relate to the star's apparent magnitude, a measure of its apparent brightness. The larger dots represent brighter stars. The Greek letters mark the brightest stars in the constellation. These are ranked by brightness with the brightest star being labeled alpha, the second brightest beta, etc., although this ordering is not always followed exactly. The dotted boundary lines mark the IAU's boundaries of the constellations and the solid green lines mark one of the common forms used to represent the figures of the constellations. Neither the constellation boundaries, nor the lines joining the stars appear on the sky. The blue line at the bottom of the diagram marks the ecliptic.

Diagram credit: Adapted by the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education from the original by the IAU and Sky & Telescope. Credit Link

Diagram translation status: Not yet approved by a reviewer
Diagram translators: An automated transliteration from the simplified Chinese translation by -
Related glossary terms: 天球坐標 , 拱極星 , 星座 , 星雲 , 疏散星團 , 視星等 , 赤經（RA） , 赤緯 , 金牛座 , 雙子座 , 黃道
Categories: Naked Eye Astronomy

Diagram license: Creative Commons 姓名標示 4.0 國際 (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons 姓名標示 4.0 國際 (CC BY 4.0) icons