BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Auriga the Charioteer

The constellation Auriga represents a charioteer, but he has no chariot. However he does have a she-goat and two kids, as well as a rare ring galaxy and a runaway star. Capella is one of the sky's brightest stars, but it also has some surprises.

Auriga the Charioteer

The star AE Aurigae is also known as the Flaming Star, and it's surrounded by nebula IC 405 (the Flaming Star Nebula). The region seems to be smoky, but nothing is on fire there. What looks like smoke is interstellar hydrogen with dark filaments of dust grains. The reddish glow shows that it is an emission nebula - the glow of the energized hydrogen is red.

The nebula, which is about five light years across, is about 1500 light years away in the constellation Auriga

Image Credit & Copyright: Martin Pugh

It looks like the kitten has got hold of a yarn ball, but it's a picture of supernova remnant Simeis 147 on the boundary between the constellations Auriga and Taurus. The supernova remnant is estimated to be 40,000 years old. It was the product of a massive star star finally running out of fuel, and whose core collapsed, ending in a massive explosion whose remnant we can see today. The shocked, glowing hydrogen gas is emitting the red color of the filaments. In addition to the remnant, there is also a pulsar, a neutron star is all that's left of the core of the original star. The bright star is Elnath (Beta Tauri).

Image Credit & Copyright: Rogelio Bernal Andreo (Deep Sky Colors)

Beautiful, blue vdB 31 is a reflection nebulae lit by the hot young star AB Aurigae. The nebula preferentially reflects the blue part of the star's spectrum. The star also has a flattened dusty disk with some evidence that a planetary system may be forming there. AB Aurigae is about 470 light-years away.

Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block, Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter, U. Arizona

The Spider and the Fly in the constellation Auriga, photographed by Joe Morris. The spider-shaped gas cloud on the left is actually an emission nebula labelled IC 417, while the smaller fly-shaped cloud on the right is dubbed NGC 1931 and is both an emission nebula and a reflection nebula. About 10,000 light-years distant, both nebulas harbor young, open star clusters. For scale, the more compact NGC 1931 (Fly) is about 10 light-years across.

Text: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)

Star Formation in the Tadpole Nebula (IC 410), which lies some 12,000 light years away in the constellation Auriga (the Charioteer)

The cloud of glowing gas is over 100 light-years across, sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from embedded open star cluster NGC 1893. Formed in the interstellar cloud a mere 4 million years ago, bright newly formed cluster stars are seen all around the star-forming nebula. Notable near the image center are two relatively dense streamers of material trailing away from the nebula's central regions. Potentially sites of ongoing star formation in IC 410, these cosmic tadpole shapes are about 10 light-years long. The featured image was taken in infrared light by NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite.

Image Credit: WISE, IRSA, NASA; Processing & Copyright: Francesco Antonucci
Text: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)