SUPERCEDED-NEWER VERSION AVAILABLE---NGC 6946 - The Fireworks Galaxy on the Border of Cepheus...
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NGC 6946 is a face on spiral galaxy located on the border of Cepheus and Cygnus. This beautiful galaxy is renowned for having an unusually large number of supernovae, thus earning its title as the "Fireworks Galaxy".
In this image, North is Up. This image is cropped to 54% of the original full frame.
Exposure Details |
Lens |
Celestron C-8 SCT with Celestron focal reducer |
Focal Length |
1260mm |
Focal Ratio |
f/6.3 |
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Mount |
Schaefer GEM - 7 1/2 |
Guiding |
80mm f/11 guidescope with PHD Guiding |
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Camera |
Canon 20Da |
Exposure |
212 subexposures of 180 seconds each at ISO 1600 - over 10 1/2 hours total |
Calibration |
30 darks, 30 flats, 30 bias |
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Date |
August 25, 27, and 28, 2011 |
Temperature |
68F on 8/25, 69F on 8/27 and 8/28 |
SQM Reading |
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Seeing |
4 of 5 on all 3 nights |
Location |
Pine Mountain Club, California |
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Software Used |
Images Plus 4.0 for camera control, calibration, stacking and digital development. Photoshop CS5 used for flat fielding, shadows and highlights, color balance, saturation, high pass filter. Carboni Actions for star saturation adjustments, HLVG for additional color correction. |
Notes |
This is my longest exposure to date, and I think the extra integration time paid off.
This image was chosen Digital Astro Challenge Photo 2nd place for August 2011 in the Galaxy Category. I reprocessed this image in December 2011 to be much improved. This reprocessed version is HERE. |
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