A cold (18 degrees F) clear night after a weekend of snow and cold temperatures, I couldn't pass up the chance to image for our next clear night might be several days in the future.

Messier 35 (M35) is a large open star cluster located in the northern constellation Gemini. The cluster consists of several hundred stars, of which 120 are brighter than magnitude 13. The central region has a density of 6.21 stars per cubic parsec.

M35 has the Trumpler classification III 3 r, which means that it is detached from the surrounding star field with no noticeable concentration (III), that it contains both bright and faint stars (3) and that it is richly populated (r), with more than 100 stars.The cluster has an apparent magnitude of 5.3 and lies at an approximate distance of 2,800 light years from Earth. It has the designation NGC 2168 in the New General Catalogue.Messier 35 is the only Messier object in Gemini. The best time of year to observe it from northern latitudes is in the winter months, when the constellation is high overhead. M35 lies near the border with Taurus, Auriga and Orion.It is easy to find as it is located about 3.5 degrees northwest of the star Mu Geminorum, in the middle of a region that contains some of the brightest stars in the sky: Aldebaran, Capella, Betelgeuse, Castor and Pollux.The cluster’s brightest stars can be resolved in 10×50 binoculars. Small telescopes will reveal some of the fainter stars, while 6-inch and 8-inch telescopes at low magnifications show a field full of stars across the cluster.An easy way to locate M35 is to draw a line from Betelgeuse in Orion to Pollux in Gemini and find Alhena, Gamma Geminorum, the brightest star along this imaginary line and the third brightest star in Gemini, after Pollux and Castor. A line drawn from Alhena in the direction of Capella in Auriga constellation leads directly to the cluster. Capella is easy to identify as it is the sixth brightest star in the sky, outshining the other bright stars in the vicinity, and part of Auriga’s hexagon, formed by the constellation’s brightest stars.The estimated age of M35 is about 110 million years. The hottest main sequence stars in the cluster have the spectral classification B3. M35 also contains more evolved stars, including several orange and yellow giants. The cluster is approaching us at 5 km/s.Messier 35 occupies an area of 28 arc minutes on the sky, which is roughly equal to the size of the full Moon. The cluster has a true diameter of about 24 light years. The region within the central 3.75 parsecs of the cluster has an estimated mass between 1,600 and 3,200 times solar.  Messier 35 was discovered by the Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Chéseaux. English astronomer John Bevis found the cluster independently before 1750 and included it in his Uranographia Britannica.Another open cluster, NGC 2158, lies about 15 arc minutes to the southwest of M35 and can be seen in larger amateur telescopes. NGC 2158 has a visual magnitude of 8.6 and occupies an area of 5 arc minutes. It is considerably older, more compact and contains more stars. It is also more than five times more distant than M35 and the two clusters are not physically related.A similar, but less populated open cluster than NGC 2158 can be found 50 arc minutes west of M35. IC 2157 may appear in the same field of view as the other two clusters in wide-field optics. It has an apparent diameter or 8 arc minutes and an apparent magnitude of 8.4.

@Information from https://messier-objects.com