Fireworks Galaxy from my Red Zone (Jonathan Piques)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg) · Contains: Fireworks Galaxy · NGC 6946

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Fireworks Galaxy from my Red Zone

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Fireworks Galaxy from my Red Zone

NGC 6946, or the Fireworks Galaxy, is a face-on spiral galaxy in the vicinity of Cepheus/Cygnus, about 25 million light years away. It's only about a third the size of our own galaxy, at 40,000 light years across, and contains a number of interesting features, from X-ray hot spots to dark lanes relatively devoid of stars. It's also a frequent generator of supernovae, with 10 in the last century alone (compare to our own galaxy's 1 - 2 average per century)--so it definitely lives up to its name!

I did everything wrong in capturing the data for this image. First, let's start with the location: I live in a borderline red zone, so going after galaxies isn't exactly the best idea to begin with. Next, most of this data was capturing during a full or nearly full moon. Finally, the seeing--even for my location--was lousy: on the few 'clear' nights I've had, it's been 99% humidity, with plenty of high wispy clouds, and the occasional smoke from wildfires out west. But hey, when it's been raining every day for seemingly the past month you can't be too choosy (read: I am impatient), so I forged ahead.

And all in all, considering the conditions, it's not a terrible result. I ended up with more detail than I thought I might get. It's definitely much noisier than most of my images because of all the gradient removal I had to do, but if you don't zoom in too closely it's not horrific.

I am really excited to be relocating my imaging rig out to Deep Sky West next week (a 27 hour road trip adventure from Virginia!), and if weather permits I may take another run at this from there, just to see the difference a good, dark location makes. Stay tuned...

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

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.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
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	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4918529
PixInsight job	O0PTD3PEOLPU0IYPDAFRHL3J6ZQFWZQE
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	20h34m51s.120
RA (top/left)	20h36m01s.556
RA (top/right)	20h32m14s.191
RA (bottom/right)	20h33m41s.861
RA (bottom/left)	20h37m27s.588

Dec (center)	+60°08′22″.86
Dec (top/left)	+60°26′03″.92
Dec (top/right)	+60°11′12″.94
Dec (bottom/right)	+59°50′39″.50
Dec (bottom/left)	+60°05′21″.27

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Fireworks Galaxy from my Red Zone

Fireworks Galaxy from my Red Zone

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Fireworks Galaxy from my Red Zone

Fireworks Galaxy from my Red Zone

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