NGC 6946 is a face-on spiral galaxy lying 25 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. It is also known as the Fireworks Galaxy because it exhibited ten supernovae during the 20th century. Typically, a spiral galaxy would have one supernova per century. However, what is unusual about this galaxy is that it lies fairly close to the plane of the Milky Way in the sky. You can tell this by the large number of stars visible in the images. Very few galaxies are visible this close to the Milky Way because dense dust clouds within it usually completely obscure our view. Our view of this galaxy is still significantly dimmed by intervening dust within our Milky Way. The Ghost Bush Cluster (
NGC 6939) is an open cluster in the constellation
Cepheus. The cluster lies 2/3° northwest of the Fireworks Galaxy. The cluster lies approximately 4,000 light years away and it is over a billion years old.
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