Aries

Aries, The Ram, is rather inconspicuous, and is somewhat difficult to identify, even when located. It lies just to the West of the famous Pleiades star cluster. The Ram sports only one 2nd magnitude star, Hamal, and does not easily resemble its namesake. Hamal is about 66 light years from Earth and about 90 times as bright as our sun. This is because it is about twice the mass of our sun but 15 times its diameter; it is a type K star and has bloated up to a giant size due to having run out of hydrogen in its core. Hamal has at least one large planet in its sytem. Sheratan is a type A star about 60 light years distant and is also about twice the sun's mass. But unlike Hamal, it is still fusing hydrogen and thus is only twice its size and 22 times as luminous. Mesartim is a triple system containing two large, bright, type A stars orbited farther away by a type K, all at the distance of about 200 light years. Aries has no other objects of note but does lie in the zodiac. The very bright object in the lower right of my image is Jupiter.
Aries is best viewed from October through February.