Here we have NGC6946 The Fireworks Galaxy located between Cepheus and Cygnus. This is an intermediate spiral galaxy lying approximately 25 million lys away. It is approximately 1/3 the size of the Milky Way. "wikipedia"

The galaxy is quite dynamic with a number of recent supernovae. There are also a lot of very active star forming regions as well as dark lanes of dust and gas.

This is the first light for a new camera for me, the ASI183mm. I had been using the OSC version of this camera and came to appreciate its capabilities very much, particularly in the HyperStar system where its small pixel size is a very good match to the short focal length. The camera does have quite small well capacities, I think, and for that reason I use very short exposure times for my sub-frames and pay close attention to ADU stats.

I had two objectives I wanted to meet with this image and I think I got close on both: I wanted to show the H2 regions but not over emphasize or otherwise overdo that. So with the HA data, I added that to my luminance data to make a sort of enhance luminance channel. I added the HA data again, using pixelmath, to bring out that magenta/red representing those starburst regions. I think this came out OK. The other objective I had was to try to preserve the background dust that is part of the overall morphology of this part of the sky. I had to very carefully apply DBE so as to kill gradients but not kill that nice background. I think I got close on that too.

Color was difficult on this one and I struggled with it. I kind of think that the area should have a more reddish cast because of all that dust but I could not put that together in a way I thought presentable.

I hope you like this one, it was another really good learning experience and like I say, if I can improve some aspect in every image, I am very happy!

Clear Skies and good health....

P.S. I had imaging window issues on this one and only had about 2.5 hours per night to work on this and that window occurred early in the evening when the object was still quite low. But I think it is still OK. Also, I did include the full crop of this so one could better see the background dust.