The Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the Max Planck Gesellschaft/European Southern Observatory 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile has taken this beautiful image of the open Wild Duck Cluster, Messier 11, or NGC 6705. The blue stars in the center of the image are the young, hot stars of the cluster. The surrounding redder stars are older, cooler background stars.
Distance: 6,000 light years
Messier 11 is one of the richest and most compact open clusters currently known. By investigating the brightest, hottest main sequence stars in the cluster astronomers estimate that it formed roughly 220 million years ago. Open clusters tend to contain fewer and younger stars than their more compact globular cousins, and Messier 11 is no exception.
The lifespans of open clusters are also relatively short compared to those of globular ones; stars in open clusters are spread further apart and are thus not as strongly bound to each other by gravity, causing them to be more easily and quickly drawn away by stronger gravitational forces. As a result Messier 11 is likely to disperse in a few million years as its members are ejected one by one, pulled away by other celestial objects in the vicinity.
The 2.2m telescope at La Silla has been in operation since early 1984 and is on indefinite loan to the European Southern Observatory from the Max Planck Gesellschaft. The telescope time is shared between Max Planck Institute and ESO Observers. Operation and maintenance of the telescope is the responsibility of ESO.
Learn more about the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope:
https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/lasilla/mpg22/
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Release Date: Oct. 1, 2014
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