Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Scutum (Sct)  ·  Contains:  M 11  ·  NGC 6705  ·  Wild Duck cluster
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M11 - The Wild Duck Cluster, greenbbs
M11 - The Wild Duck Cluster
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M11 - The Wild Duck Cluster

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M11 - The Wild Duck Cluster, greenbbs
M11 - The Wild Duck Cluster
Powered byPixInsight

M11 - The Wild Duck Cluster

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Description

M11 - The Wild Duck Cluster in the constellation Scutum

So, another cluster that I shot last night was M11, or the Wild Duck Cluster, which lives in the constellation Scutum (the shield).

It is a very dense, compact cluster, with approximately 2900 stars in it. Additionally, it's VERY young, with an estimated age of 220 million years old. The cluster lives about 6200 light years from Earth.

It appears similar to the globular cluster M13 (that I put up last night), but is technically an open cluster. The major difference is the number of stars. Clusters like M13 tend to have hundreds of thousands of stars in them, rather than just thousands.

A long time ago, when it was discovered, the people who discovered it thought that it looked like a "flock of wild ducks", which is why it has this name!

DETAILS:

Sony A6000 at ISO 400

Stellarvue SV80ST refractor

25 shots x 60 seconds

Stacked and processed in PixInsight, Photoshop and Lightroom.

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M11 - The Wild Duck Cluster, greenbbs