We present CCD broad band photometric observations in the fields of the Third Galactic Quadrant open clusters NGC 2580 and NGC 2588 ( V ( I ) _ { C } and UBV ( RI ) _ { C } respectively ) .
From the analysis of our data we found that NGC 2580 is located at a distance of about 4 kpc and its age is close to 160 Myr .
As for NGC 2588 , it is placed at about 5 kpc from the Sun and is 450 Myr old .
This means that NGC 2588 belongs to the extension of the Perseus arm , whereas NGC 2580 is closer to the local arm structure .
The luminosity functions ( LFs ) have been constructed for both clusters down to V \sim 20 together with their initial mass functions ( IMFs ) for stars with masses above M \sim 1 - 1.5 M _ { \sun } .
The IMF slopes for the most massive bins yielded values of x \approx 1.3 for NGC 2580 and x \approx 2 for NGC 2588 .
In the case of this latter cluster we found evidence of a core-corona structure produced probably by dynamical effect .
In the main sequences of both clusters we detected gaps , which we suggest could be real features .