Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Just in time for the fourth of July I did some imaging of the Fireworks Galaxy also known as NGC 6946. Although it kind of looks like a firework in the image with Hydrogen alpha added in, this little galaxy actually gets its name due to all the supernovas that have occurred in it (~10 in the last centry). The first image was created by combining monochrome images taken using a Luminance, Red, Green and Blue filters. The second image added frames to the red channel using a 5 Nanometer Hydrogen Alpha Filter (Note: the HA frames where masked to only add HA data to the galaxy so that the foreground stars retained their color from just the LRGB data). The red knots in the second image show locations of active star formation in NGC 6946. This galaxy is about 1/3 the diameter of our galaxy (The Milky Way) and has ~1/2 the number of stars. NGC 6946 is in the Constellation of Cygnus and is around 25.2 Million Light years away.
If you double download the image you can find many more distant galaxies none of which appear in my charts (look for small elongated and or fuzzy blobs of light). All question, comments and suggestions are welcome.

For those interested These images were taken with a 4000mm focal length at F10 using a 16 inch Meade LX200 Schmidt Cassegrain telescope. The camera used is a monochrome ASI 6200MM pro cooled camera. All images were taken at -12 degrees C, with the gain set to 100 and the binning set to 2x2.
The following exposures were used
35 frames for 4 minutes each using the Luminance filter
25 frames for 5 minutes each using the Red filter.
22 frames for 5 minutes each using the Green filter
21 frames for 5 minutes each using the Blue filter.
Total exposure time for the LRGB set was 8 hours

For the Ha exposures 17 frames were taken at 10 minutes each for a total of 2 hours and 50 minutes.
Pixinsight was used to calibrate, register and stack the frames together.

LRGB version of NGC 6946

(Download)

Version with Ha added to the Red Channel

(Download)

rmorrison1116 Loc: Near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

Really cool photos...!

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi rmorrison1116
Thanks for checking out the images of the Fireworks Galaxy and for the comment.

tcthome Loc: NJ

Irvingite Charles Loc: Irving, Tx

gmontjr2350 Loc: Southern NJ

Outstanding!!!

George

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Nice.

Retired CPO Loc: Travel full time in an RV

So cool! I like the one with red especially!

ecobin Loc: Paoli, PA

Superb images!
👍👍👍👍

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi tcthome
Thanks for checking out the images of NGC 6946 and for the Thumbs up.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Irvingite Charles
Thanks for viewing the photos of The Fireworks Galaxy and for the Thumbs up.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi George
Thanks for checking out the photos of NGC 6946 and for the comment.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Longshadow
Thanks for viewing the images of NGC 6946, for the Thumbs up and the comment.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi Retired CPO
Thanks for the comment and for viewing the images of The Fireworks Galaxy. The one with Ha data really adds to this Galaxy.

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Hi ecobin
Thanks for viewing the photos of The Fireworks Galaxy, for the comment and the Thumbs up.