NGC 6946, (also known as the Fireworks Galaxy, Arp 29, and Caldwell 12), is an intermediate spiral galaxy about 22.5 million light-years away, in the constellations Cepheus and Cygnus. It was discovered by William Herschel on September 9, 1798. NGC 6946 is highly obscured by interstellar matter of the Milky Way galaxy, as it is quite close to the galactic plane. Nine supernovae (SN 1917A, SN 1939C, SN 1948B, SN 1968D, SN 1969P, SN 1980K, SN 2002hh, SN 2004et, and SN 2008S) in the last 60 years or so, have been observed in NGC 6946. There are polarisation data within ranges 0.17-0.18 m and 0.21-0.23 m, observed in 2003 by WSRT. [Source: Wikipedia]

In the past century, eight supernovas have been observed to explode in the arms of this galaxy. Chandra observations have, in fact, revealed three of the oldest supernovas ever detected in X-rays, giving more credence to its nickname of the "Fireworks Galaxy." [Source: NASA]

NGC 6946 is both a spectacular and dim galaxy in Cepheus. At a distance of 10 million light years (or 22.5mly -- note differences in sources), this galaxy is one of about a dozen nearby neighbors to the Milky Way. Like M83, this galaxy has had an enormous number of supernovae explosions in the past 60 years. If we could watch this galaxy with years passing as seconds- every moment or two we would see a star blow up! [Source: Best of AOP]

The image was captured with the Meade 12"LX200, using the Atik 383L+ mono at F7.16. Astronomik's LRGB filters were used. All subs were taken at 1x1 bin, -10C, and 10 minutes each.

Image:

Lum : 28 subs (4.67hr) on Oct 14th, 17th and 18th.

Red : 10 subs (1.67 hr) on Oct 14th, and 15th.

Green : 10 subs (1.67 hr) on Oct 17th.

Blue : 10 subs (1.67 hr) on Oct 17th and 18th.

Processing was done with PixInsight, following (for the most part) kayronjm's tutorial of Feb. 24th. Only L was used to develop the Luminance image. R, G and B were collected for the color mix.

North is up, and this is a very slight crop. This is about my third full use of the Plate Solve capability within Sequence Generator Pro (using Astrometry), and I am extremely pleased with it.