Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  NGC 6946
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The Fireworks Galaxy, Gabe Shaughnessy
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The Fireworks Galaxy

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The Fireworks Galaxy, Gabe Shaughnessy
Powered byPixInsight

The Fireworks Galaxy

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Description

The Fireworks Galaxy, NGC6946, is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Cygnus and lies some 18 million light-years away. It is receding away from us at 48 km/s due to the expansion of the universe. True to its name, the Fireworks Galaxy has had many supernovae since observations began, with 8 occurring in the past century alone. Star forming regions stand out as the red knots throughout the spiral arms and renew the stellar population.

The core of this galaxy has a distinctive orange-reddish hue. This is due to the line-of-sight through the dust of our own Milky Way galaxy, and is known as galactic extinction. The intervening dust preferentially scatters blue light and passes red light, in the same way the sky scatters sunlight during the sunset. Since the position of this galaxy is just north of the Cygnus arm of our galaxy, you could think of it as a galactic sunset on our Milky Way. From an observer in NGC6946, the Milky Way would appear as a nearly edge-on spiral galaxy in a similar appearance as NGC4565

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The Fireworks Galaxy, Gabe Shaughnessy