Open cluster
Wild Duck Cluster (M11)
In Scutum (Sct) • Magnitude 5.8 • 14 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with Wild Duck Cluster pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
One of the richest and most densely packed open clusters in the sky, containing around 2,900 stars — far more than most open clusters. At only 250 million years old, its most massive members are still blazing brightly, and the fan-shaped group of stars was likened to wild ducks in flight by early observers.
Wild Duck Cluster at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M11, N 6705 |
| Type | Open cluster |
| Constellation | Scutum (Sct) |
| Right ascension | 18h 51m 07s |
| Declination | -06° 16' 12" |
| Apparent magnitude | 5.80 |
| Angular size | 14.0 × 14.0 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 39° |
| Best imaging months | Mar, Apr, May |
How to image Wild Duck Cluster
Wild Duck Cluster sits in the constellation Scutum at right ascension 18h 51m 07s and declination -06° 16' 12". To frame and integrate it well, AstroPlanner will compute the optimal moonless window for tonight from your location, the field-of-view fit against your sensor and focal length, the suggested total integration time given your aperture and sky Bortle class, and a cloud-aware schedule that drops it from the plan if your nearest cloud forecast spike overlaps the best altitude window.