The Wild Duck Cluster (Messier 11) is one of the richest and most compact open star clusters known, packing nearly 3,000 stars into a glittering swarm in the constellation Scutum. Its brightest members form a V-shape that 19th-century observers thought resembled a flock of ducks in flight, and it ranks as the most distant open cluster in the Messier catalog still visible to the naked eye.

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