NGC6946 Fireworks Galaxy in Cygnus

NGC 6946 is a face-on intermediate spiral galaxy with a small bright nucleus, whose location in the sky straddles the boundary between the northern constellations of Cepheus and Cygnus. Its distance from Earth is about 25.2 million light-years

 

It gets its name, Fireworks Galaxy because of the number of Supernova explosions that have been reported in the galaxy. In the last century alone, at least 10 supernovae have been detected in the galaxy. N.A.S.A.

 

It is also known as a Starburst Galaxy galaxy due to the number of new stars being created.

 

I have taken images of this galaxy before, but this time I have worked on sharpening up the collimation, adjusted the back-focus and opened up the image train (by replacing the 50mm M42 spacer with an M48 spacer) to reduce vignetting. This has not just helped the image camera it has also improved the view for the guide camera, resulting in better tracking.

 

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Telescope: Celestron C11-A XLT Schmidt Cassegrain OTA

Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

 

Controller: ZWO ASIAIR Plus 256G

Main Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro at -10C

Filter: Optolong L-Pro filter

Focuser: ZWO EAF

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI174MM Mini guidecam

Guide via: ZWO OAG

 

Stacked from:

Lights 85 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Darks 30 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Flats 30 at 1.1 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Dark Flats 30 at 1.1 seconds gain 101 temp -10C

 

Bortle 4 sky.

Integrated the saved frames in Astro Pixel Processor.

Processed in PixInsight

Added captions in Photoshop CS4

 

 

Done