My first time imaging this cluster.
Messier 11 (M11), popularly known as the Wild Duck Cluster, is a rich, compact open cluster located in the southern constellation
ScutumThe Wild Duck Cluster has an apparent magnitude of 6.3 and lies at a distance of 6,200 light years, or 1,900 parsecs from Earth. It covers an area of 14 arc minutes of apparent sky and is believed to be about 220 million years old. M11 is receding from us at 22 km/s. It has the designation NGC 6705 in the New General Catalogue.The Wild Duck Cluster is the most distant open cluster listed in the
Messier catalogue that is visible to the naked eye. The cluster contains about 2,900 stars, which makes it one of the most populated open clusters known. It is also one of the most compact clusters and appears as a diamond-shaped patch in binoculars. The brighter members of the cluster form a V-shaped triangle that could be said to resemble a flock of ducks when observed in a small telescope, which is how M11 got its name.About 500 of the stars in M11 are brighter than magnitude 14. The brightest, hottest main sequence stars in the cluster have the spectral classification of B8, giving an estimated age of 220 million years for M11. The cluster also contains a significant number of red and yellow giants.The stars in the cluster are only loosely bound to one another and M11 will disperse in a few million years, as its members are ejected one by one as a result of the cluster being affected by gravity from other celestial objects in the vicinity.The brightest star in M11, designated HD 174512 (HIP 92507), is a white bright giant with an apparent magnitude of 8.47. The star has the stellar classification A0 II/III and is part of a multiple star system.Messier 11 contains 82 variable stars, many of which are pulsating variables and eclipsing binary stars.The cluster was discovered by the German astronomer Gottfried Kirch, director of the Berlin Observatory, in 1681
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