Messier 11 - The Wild Duck Cluster

Messier 11, also known as the Wild Duck Cluster, is a open cluster in the constellation Scutum. Which is Latin for the Shield, pretty cool, having a massive shield in the sky. Does it guard is against aliens of astroids? Probably not. While it does not guard is against anything, I can tell you something more about the open cluster in it. The Wild Duck Cluster is relavitvely young compared to the other clusters I have spoken about in the Messier 1-10 blog posts. It is current age is approximately 220-250 million years, even for open clusters is this pretty young. It contains around 2,900 stars and it's about 32 arcminutes across in our sky.

I captured this during a Messier Marathon I did back in August of 2025.