M26 (Open Cluster)
A small open cluster in Scutum, about 6,000 light-years away and 130 million years old. It is faint for a Messier cluster: magnitude 8.9.
Open cluster in Scutum. Magnitude 8.9.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 74° above the southern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 77° above the southern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 1 Jul, in the middle of its season. The page works out tonight's rise, highest point and set for both towns in Guyana time (UTC-4), and where the Moon is.
What you'll see
- Your eyes: Not visible to the eye. It lies 13.0° north-west of Albaldah.
- 10x50 binoculars: A small hazy knot with a few stars resolved.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A small, faint group of stars at low to medium power; a dark site helps.
- A camera: Tiny on camera: it needs 2,000 mm or more of focal length on a tracking mount.
How big, how bright, how far
- Size on the sky: 6′, 19% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 8.9. Fainter than the faintest stars in Georgetown (4.3) and Lethem (6.0): binoculars or a telescope.
- Distance: 6,000 light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 6,000 years ago.
- True size: 10 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 10 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Open cluster
- Mass
- About 2,700 times the Sun's mass, in its stars
- Age
- About 130 million years (range 89 million years to 200 million years)
What is in it, not measured:
- Stars born together: from one cloud of gas, at one time
How we know: Distance from Gaia parallaxes of its stars: Hunt & Reffert 2024, A&A 686, A42 (Gaia DR3 cluster catalogue, VizieR J/A+A/686/A42), retrieved 2026-10-21: NGC 6694 1,835 pc; statistical 5,969-6,004 ly (16th-84th percentile); Gaia DR3 parallax zero-point systematics (about 0.02 mas) add about 4%. True size: the apparent size times the distance (apparent size: OpenNGC (Mattia Verga, CC BY-SA 4.0), commit 4e2398a2). Mass: Hunt & Reffert 2024, A&A 686, A42 (Gaia DR3 cluster catalogue, VizieR J/A+A/686/A42), retrieved 2026-10-21, NGC 6694: total 2,645 ± 141 Suns.
More deep-sky objects: Wild Duck Cluster (M11) · Eagle Nebula (M16) · M18 (Open Cluster) · M25 (Open Cluster IC 4725) · Globular Cluster M22 · IC 4756 (Open Cluster)