The Messier  11 cluster holds special value for me. In March 1996, I first discovered the sky, thanks to the passage of the Hyakutake comet. By June, on my 37th birthday, I received my first telescope, a shaky 6 cm refractor. By the end of July, after several nights of wrestling with star maps and planispheres, I saw my first deep-sky object: M11, a faint, blurry spot with a bright central point. There was no turning back after that. In these 28 years, the sky has evolved along with my perspective, but M11 remains that nearly invisible, extraordinary smudge from a July night in 1996. 

The open cluster M11 (NGC 6705) is justifiably popular. It can be observed with a modest instrument of only 50 or 60 times magnification. It’s interesting to delve into its history with the help of Burnham’s Celestial Handbook (p. 1750). M11 was discovered by Gottfried Kirch on September 1, 1681, at the Berlin Observatory, and sometimes it’s referred to as “Kirch’s Nebula.” He described it as a "small, obscure spot with a star shining through and rendering it more luminous", which is essentially what we see with a small telescope today. The first person to resolve it into individual stars was Reverend William Derham, who wrote the book Astro-Theology: Or, a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, From a Survey of the Heavens. In 1732, Derham observed that Kirch’s nebula was “not a nebula, but a cluster of stars somewhat like that which is in the Milky Way”.  Charles Messier added M11 to his catalog on May 30, 1764, describing it as “A cluster of a great number of small stars which can be seen in a good telescope. In a 3-foot [focal length] instrument it looks like a comet. The cluster is mingled with a faint light; 8 mag. star in cluster”.  Herschel and D’Arrest noted the apparent division of the cluster into two groups of stars, and Admiral W.H. Smyth (1788–1865) remarked that the main group resembled “a flight of wild ducks.” This description has stood the test of time, as thousands of amateur astronomers continue searching for the "flight of wild ducks" of the Admiral Smith.

M11 is located at the northeastern edge of a dense region of the Milky Way known as the "Scutum Star Cloud," so its background is filled with stars, along with some dark dust bands. It’s an incredibly dense and compact open cluster, with 2.4 stars per cubic light-year density, comparable to that of a globular cluster of class X (globular clusters are ranked from I, with the highest stellar density, to XII, the weakest). This makes it denser than some globular clusters. More than 2,900 stars have been cataloged in this cluster, 500 of which are magnitude 14 or brighter. The stars are primarily hot blue and white ones, though there are also some yellow and orange stars. The magnitude 8 star that stands out near the center (a bit to the southeast) doesn’t appear to be associated with the cluster itself. M11 is estimated to be 220 million years old and is located 6,120 light-years from the Sun, placing it in the Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy, along with M16 and M17. At this distance, the core would span more than 23 light-years, with its less dense outer regions extending up to 60 light-years.

The field of my photography in the Scutum Star Cloud of the Milky Way

My photograph isn’t particularly special. I dedicated more than 4 hours of exposure in RGB, even though its apparent magnitude is 6.3. I used drizzle stacking and processed it entirely at this resolution. With so many bright, colorful stars and the rich background of the Milky Way, the challenge in processing was deciding which elements to highlight and how to avoid an overwhelming star field. Ultimately, I opted not to crop out the magnificent background of the Scutum Cloud and to give M11 a balanced presence. I maintained high resolution for energetic zooming to appreciate the density and colors of the stars—or so I hope. You have to get imaginative to see a differentiated upper and lower grouping of stars in the cluster, and even more imaginative (while sober) to make out that lock of wild ducks.