One of my lifelong avocations is stargazing—not in a serious astronomical sense, but just to see the pictures in the sky and learn their fascinating historical lore (I’m always a sucker for historical lore). This week’s constellation is Auriga, the Charioteer or Wainman. At the left we see him as he appeared in Urania’s Mirror, a set of hand-painted cards published in London around 1825. (The scan is courtesy Ian Ridpath.) The constellation was first described in ancient times along the Euphrates River, in much the same form as we imagine it today.
Auriga appears in the sky as a pentagon shape, which represents the Charioteer himself. Alpha Aurigae, or Capella, is a first-magnitude (very bright) white star representing a she-goat the Charioteer is carrying in the crook of his left arm, and the three smaller stars forming a long triangular shape beneath Capella are the she-goat’s kids. 
Why is a Charioteer carring a goat and her kids? There’s no one explanation. Some say that the unusual formation of bright Capella with her three kids beside her came first, and the Charioteer was later imagined around them. In any case, if you look directly overhead around midnight on a winter evening (if you are in the US—in other parts of the world the positions of the constellations will vary) it will be easy to pick out bright Capella and her triangular cluster of three kids, and consider the fact that you are seeing the same stars the Babylonians saw, and the same picture they imagined.
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