- M 11 (NGC 6705) The Wild Duck Cluster
M 11 (NGC 6705) is an open cluster located in the small constellation Scutum. It is one of the richest and densest open clusters, packing an estimated 2900 member stars into a group around 23 LY across. If you were on a planet circling one of the stars near its center, the night sky would be lit up with hundreds of first-magnitude stars. M 11 is located at a distance of around 6120 LY within the Sagittarius arm of our Milky Way galaxy. With an age of around 250 million years, many of the cluster's stars are still blue-white giants, which visually helps it stand out against the background of tiny golden Milky Way stars.
The name "Wild Duck Cluster" is credited to Admiral Smyth, a contemporary of William Herschel, who described a portion of the cluster as looking like a flight of wild geese. The cluster was first observed by Gottfried Kirch on the 1st of September, 1681. For a number of years afterwards, the object was known as "Kirch's Nebula."
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