Nephele, one of the nymphs of the clouds and daughter of Okeanos, was married to Athamas, king of Orchomenos in Boiotia, and gave birth to twins, Phrixos and Helle. Some years later, Athamas divorced Nephele and married Ino, daughter of Kadmos, King of Thebes. Ino was jealous of the twins, and plotted to kill them. She destroyed the seed corn and the kingdom was in danger of starvation. King Athamas sent envoys to consult the Oracle at Delphi to find out how he might save the population from starvation. Ino bribed the envoys to tell him that the only solution was to sacrifice Phrixos to Zeus. Although originally reluctant to do so, Athamas eventually agreed in order to save his people. Just in time, Nephele sent a marvellous ram, a gift to her from Hermes, which could fly and talk, and whose fleece was spun from gold. The ram told the twins to climb on his back and flew off with them, instructing them not to look down. As they were flying over the straits dividing Europe from Asia, Helle looked down and fell off the ram and drowned in the sea below which was called the Hellespont* in her honour. The ram flew on and eventually landed with Phrixos in Aia at the eastern end of the Black Sea. Here the king was Aietes, son of Helios, who welcomed Phrixos and gave him the hand of his daughter Chalkiope in marriage. In gratitude for his salvation, Phrixos sacrificed the ram to Zeus who put it in the stars as the constellation Aries. Phrixos gave the golden fleece to Aietes, who hung it on an Oak tree, guarded by a dragon. There it hung for many years until it was stolen by Jason.
* The Hellespont is now known as the Dardanelles.
Hamal, α-Arietes, is the brightest star at magnitude 2.0, β, Sharatan, is magnitude 2.6, γ, Mesarthin, is an easy double of two stars of magnitude 5.0. δ, Boein, is magnitude 4.3 and 41-Arietes is magnitude 3.6. There are no DSOs of any note in the constellation. M74 is in Pisces.
The only other matter worth mentioning is the First Point in Aries. This is the point where the ecliptic crosses the celestial equator through which the Sun passes at the Vernal Equinox. This is the origin of the Right Ascension coordinates (the equivalent of longitude on the Earth). Because of the precession of the equinoxes, this point is no longer in Aries but in the neighbouring constellation of Pisces.
The picture was taken at 22.45 UT on 10 November 2012 using a Canon 1000D camera with a 18-55 mm lens set at 35 mm. The exposure was 30 seconds at f/4.5, ISO 1600. In PhotoImpact, the background light pollution was removed and then the size reduced in two steps after each of which the gamma, contrast and brightness were increased to compensate for the loss in the reduction process.