Taurus-Auriga Complex

The Taurus-Auriga Complex is a star-forming region (SFR) in the constellation Taurus, consisting of many individual clouds, including Taurus Molecular Cloud 1 (TMC-1) and Taurus Molecular Cloud 2 (TMC-2). Variant terms are used for it, e.g., Taurus Dark Clouds, Taurus-Auriga SFR, and Taurus-Auriga Region. At 130 parsecs, it is the nearest SFR to us, thus is useful to study. It is 30 parsecs across and contains 35,000 solar masses of material.

The Perseus Complex (aka Perseus Molecular Cloud) is adjacent, and the two are sometimes considered as a larger single entity, i.e., the Taurus Auriga Perseus Complex. The designator prefix TAP is used for some stars within the cloud complex that were found in an X-ray survey.