NGC 6946 Fireworks Galaxy #3 (Molly Wakeling)

NGC 6946 Fireworks Galaxy #3

The other image I took from my recent camping trip to my astronomy club's dark sky (well, Bortle 5) site - the Fireworks Galaxy! I was excited to see some dust show up in the background, which is a challenge to get from that amount of light pollution (let alone my Bortle 7 backyard!)

The Fireworks Galaxy (NGC 6946) is a face-on spiral galaxy right in between the Cygnus and Cepheus constellations. It's a somewhat unusual galactic target in the sense that we're looking at it through the thick gas and dust of our own galaxy, rather than out above the galactic plane where galaxies are easier to see. It's about 25 million lightyears away, about the same distance as the popular galaxy M101. Due to the amount of star formation happening (a bit hard to spot in my image unfortunately -- the reddish blotches scattered through its spiral arms), it's considered to be an active starburst galaxy. The Fireworks Galaxy has had a high rate of observed supernovae, having had 10 since 1917, with the most recent in 2017, which is how it earned its name.

Women Astrophotographers

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
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Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic failed
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	8394447
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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