Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  Fireworks Galaxy  ·  NGC 6946
NGC6946, Jan Sjoerd de Vries
NGC6946
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NGC6946

NGC6946, Jan Sjoerd de Vries
NGC6946
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NGC6946

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Discovered by William Herschel on 9 September 1798 #NGC 6946 also known as the Fireworks Galaxy is a face-on intermediate spiral galaxy with a small bright nucleus, whose location in the sky straddles the boundary between the northern constellations of Cepheus and Cygnus. Its distance from Earth is about 25.2 million light-years or 7.72 megaparsecs, similar to the distance of M101 (NGC 5457) in the constellation Ursa Major.

The bright central area of this well-studied galaxy has a diameter of approximately 40,000 light-years, about one-third of the Milky Way's size, and it contains roughly half the number of stars as the Milky Way. The dim outer parts of NGC6946 makes its size closer to that of the Milky Way.

The galaxy is heavily obscured by interstellar matter as it lies quite close to the galactic plane of the Milky Way. Due to its prodigious star formation and frequent supernovae it has been classified as an active starburst galaxy (hence its nickname).

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NGC6946, Jan Sjoerd de Vries