Imaged the NGC 6946, the Fireworks Galaxy, night of September 16, 2023.  NGC 6946 has an apparent magnitude (v) of 9.6 and an apparent size of ~16 × 11 arcsec.  Also captured in the frame is open cluster NGC 6939.

Per Wikipedia (reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_6946):  "NGC 6946, sometimes referred to as the Fireworks Galaxy, 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 or 7.72 megaparsecs. Due to its prodigious star formation it has been classified as an active starburst galaxy.  NGC 6946 has also been classified as a double-barred spiral galaxy, with the inner, smaller bar presumably responsible for funneling gas into its center." 

Imaged with a William Optics GT81 at F4.7 (382 mm focal length) using Flat6A II field flattener/0.8x reducer, UVIRcut filter, and ZWO ASI 533MC Pro.  Total integration time of ~2.5 hours: 82 subs at Gain = 100 with an exposure time of 120 sec.

Pre-processed using Pixinsight's weighted batch pre-processing script (WBPP) to perform calibration, debayering, registration, local normalization, and integration.  Background removed using GradXpert.  Initial post-processing in Pixinsight:  spectrophotometric color calibration, blur x terminator, and noise x terminator.  Unscreened stars using StarXTerminator, then further processed the starless and stars images separately.  Stars image stretched using STF settings in histogram stretch, then local histogram transformation and color saturation boost.  Starless image stretched using masked stretch then processed using mask generated by EZhdr script for subsequent steps:  generalized hyperbolic stretch, HDR transformation using EasyHDR script, local histogram transformation, color saturation adjustment, and lastly re-screened stars using PixelMath. 

Original version:  NGC 6946 OSC RGB image

Rev B:  NGC 6946 OSC RGB image, starless version

Rev C:  NGC 6946 OSC RGB image, stars only version