The Charioteer. Auriga is an ancient Northern Hemisphere constellation featuring one of the brightest stars in the heavens: Capella. Auriga is usually pictured as a charioteer; the youth Auriga wields a whip in one hand and holds a goat (Capella) and her two kids in the other. Capella means "small goat". A previous name of this star was Amalthea, which was the goat that suckled the baby Zeus. There are many ancient stories relating to the star, as every culture in antiquity found a place for this bright companion to Taurus, its closest neighbor. To find Auriga, first locate Orion. Taurus is to the right (west) and just above these two, much higher in the sky, you will see Capella. While this star marks roughly the mid-point of the constellation, north to south, most of the more interesting aspects of the constellation are found to the south of the star, all the way down to El Nath, the second brightest star (gamma Arigae) which is actually shared with Taurus, and also known as beta Tauri. Auriga's stars are fairly bright; five are second magnitude or brighter. Alpha Aurigae (Capella) is the sixth brightness star in the sky, at a visual magnitude of 0.08. The star is 43.5 light years away, and is about ten times the size of our Sun. Capella's visual magnitude is really the combined brightnesses of the primary star and a close companion that revolves around it every 104 days. There is also another companion, which is much fainter, a red dwarf which is itself a close binary system.