Why look at one star cluster when you can see three of them? In the constellation Auriga, now showing up in the East around midnight, three moderately bright, but densely packed open clusters line up very nicely. The stars of Auriga are quite bright, so the pattern of the constellation should be easily visible. In the right side of that pattern, a line of stars (circled in yellow on the map) is faintly visible to the naked eye, and easy to spot through a finder scope. Follow the line of these stars to the left, and very quickly you’ll come to the first of these clusters, M38. Once you’ve found M38, start scanning down and you’ll find the other two clusters, first M36 and then M37. All three clusters are between magnitude 5.6 and 6.4 in brightness, with a large number of stars making each a telescopic treat.
