Sky & Telescope - July 2021 - 54

JULY 2021 OBSERVING
Suburban Stargazer by Ken Hewitt-White

One part of Scutum
succumbs to light pollution;
another holds up just fine.

G

ood things come in small packages. Tiny Scutum, the Shield,
hosts the Scutum Star Cloud, a glittering condensation in the summer Milky
Way. Unfortunately, the Shield can't
block light pollution. Viewed from my
suburban yard on the Canadian side of
the 49th parallel, Scutum never climbs
very high above the southern horizon.
To make matters worse, I live at the
north end of a light-blighted burgh. My
south sky is awful.
Gazing at Scutum on a humid
night last summer, I beheld precisely
two Shield stars and no hint of the
famous Star Cloud. I attacked anyway. For weapons, I chose my 4.7-inch

54

J U LY 2 0 2 1 * S K Y & T E L E S C O P E

Wild Ducks
Occupying the northeast corner of the
Scutum Star Cloud is a deep-sky showpiece even my local LED streetlights
can't wreck: the 5.8-magnitude open
cluster M11. Two centuries ago, retired
British admiral (and astronomer)
William Smyth wrote that it " somewhat resembles a ﬂ ight of wild ducks. "
Hence the evocative nickname, Wild
Duck Cluster.
The admiral's ﬂock of ﬂyers is
roughly 700-strong and crowded
into a space 11′ across. Their leader, a
8.6-magnitude lucida, gleams near the
apex of the formation. Except for that
stellar standout (likely a foreground
object), the cluster contains no stars
brighter than 11th magnitude, giving
" M11 " extra meaning. It's only because

S STARLIT DUCKS The magnificent open
cluster M11 is also known as the Wild
Duck Cluster. Its stellar ducks are flying in
a rich swath of Milky Way in the diminutive
constellation Scutum.

those myriad pinpoints are jam-packed
that the Wild Duck Cluster is so alluring - in a dark rural sky. Having never
observed M11 from town before, I ﬁrst
turned to my auto-apo and punched in
M11 on the hand-controller.
The Go To completed its duck
hunting in mere seconds. Working at
30×, the refractor presented M11 as a
teeny, mottled mass guarded by a pair
of 9th-magnitude stars. By slightly
averting my vision, I sensed a comet, its
" tail " fanning northwestward from the
lucida " nucleus. " Increasing to 38× was
enough to resolve the faux comet into a
dense salting of suns. Doubling to 76×
produced a vague patchiness. At 100×,
the cluster seemed very mottled - and
it became squarish.
Next, I grabbed the aim-by-hand
Dobsonian. I began my star-hop in
neighboring Aquila, the Eagle. To me,
the Eagle's tail is a curl of feathers

A LL IM AG ES COURTESY OF A L A N DY ER

Behind
the Shield

(120-mm) f/7.5 apochromatic refractor
on a Go To equatorial mount, and my
10-inch (25-cm) f/6 Dobsonian. The
Go To mount works perfectly well, but
I don't mind aiming the Dob manually.
Its 6×30 ﬁnderscope was all I needed for
a successful Scutum star-hop.

Sky & Telescope - July 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - July 2021

Contents
Sky & Telescope - July 2021 - Cover1
Sky & Telescope - July 2021 - Cover2
Sky & Telescope - July 2021 - 1
Sky & Telescope - July 2021 - Contents
Sky & Telescope - July 2021 - 3
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