An easy target

While our winter nights in our area are cloudy for the most part, aside from the famous objects observable (the Orion nebula, say) we have some other beautiful, easily accessible star clusters available to be observed when the sky clears. One of these, an open cluster M35, in Gemini, can be seen through binoculars, and is almost overhead during that time of year, and can be found lower in the sky well into the spring, too. There is another star cluster located close to M 35, New General Catalogue (NGC) # 2158, much fainter.

M 35 is estimated to be about 2800 light years away, while NGC 2158 is about 5 times farther away. These two clusters are not related, their proximity is just a matter of perspective from our location in our galaxy. NGC 2158 can be observed through telescopes, while 10x50 binoculars resolve the brighter stars in M 35. This cluster is roughly 110 Million years old, pretty young, if we consider the age of the Universe (about 13.7 billion years). M 35 has a diameter of about 23 light years. We're getting closer to it at a speed of about 5 km/sec.

M35 (upper left hand quadrant) and NGC 2158 (lower right). I took this picture through a remote-control Slooh.com telescope

 Below is a map of M 35's location, a screen capture from Starry Night Pro by Simulation Curriculum:

You can also see the location of a few more objects, by no means all, which are easy to find in binoculars, and are really nice in 3 to 6 inch telescopes, at low power.

There are a number of "easy targets" in the sky at this time of year; I picked just one.