"NGC2158 in Gemini" 11/11/99 Kitt Peak, Arizona
(Image by Adam Block, Willis Greiner and Cheryl Price. Copyright NOAO, all rights reserved.)

This CCD image was obtained using a 16" Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope operating at f/6.3. The camera used was a SBIG ST-8; sky chart software was Software Bisque's The Sky, acquisition and image manipulation software was Cyanogen's Maxim DL. Three 60-second exposures were taken and combined to form a raw composite image. Dark and flat-field exposures were taken and applied to the raw images.

NGC2158 is a beautiful, rich and distant galactic open star cluster. Such clusters reside in our own galaxy, the Milky Way. This particular cluster is somewhat unique in that it is very distant, probably at the very edge of our galaxy, 16 thousand light years from Earth. It is located visually at the edge of a much closer star cluster, M35. M35 is thought to be just over 2 thousand light years from us. Such is the illusion of the night sky; although all objects appear to be at the same distance, the truth is that we are looking out though all of time, from the recent past to the beginning of creation.