M35, NGC 2158

The open cluster M35 in the constellation Gemini contains a couple of hundred stars and is visible to the naked eye under good conditions. NGC2158, its fainter but compact neighbor to the south-west (lower right), is much harder to see in small telescopes, although prominent in this CCD image from a research telescope on a good mountain. M35 is about 2800 light-years away and some 110 million years old. This approximately true-color picture was created from twelve images taken in January 1997 using BVR colors, at the Burrell Schmidt telescope of Case Western Reserve University's Warner and Swasey Observatory located on Kitt Peak, near Tucson, Arizona. Image size