NGC 6946: Hiding in Our Galactic Plane (Alex Woronow)

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

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NGC 6946: Hiding in Our Galactic Plane

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NGC 6946: Hiding in Our Galactic Plane

NGC 6946: Hiding in Our Galactic Plane

OTA: CDK17
Camera: SBIG STCL11002
Observatory: Barnard Miller, New Mexico
Date of Capture: May '21
Date of Processing: Dec '23

Exposures:
R: x 600 sec
G: x "
B: x "
L: x 1200 sec
H: x 1800 sec
Total Exposure time: 28 hours
Image Width: 37.6 wide view, 26.5 cropped (arc-minutes)

Processing Tools:
1.   Commercial: PixInsight, Topaz
2.   Pixinsight Addons: NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator
3.   My Scripts: NB_Assistant, AC_Restar, Subframe Weighting Tool (Excel w/ J. Hunt), ColorTweaker

Target Description:
NGC 6946 has been classified as a starburst galaxy, although, lying close to the Milky Way's galactic plane, much of this activity appears to have muted, as does some of the overall color and detail. It has a minor central bar, which feeds matter to its central bulge, which is not very large compared to many galaxies. (Wikipedia) An interesting photo on NGC 6946's Wikipedia page shows a before-and-after pair of images where a massive star is seen in the first image and has disappeared, collapsing into a black hole, in the second!

Processing Description:
Processing was very straightforward, although I have taken to 1) using Skill for removing satellite trails (otherwise the data sets can become very sparse) and, for galaxies and globular clusters, applying the Ha data to the completed LRGB image via simple addition in PixelMath. A wider-field view appears on the left of this page.

Statistics:
Distance: 25.2M ly
Apparent Magnitude: 9.6
Average Surface Magnitude: 25
Apparent Span: 165 ly
Pixel Span at Target: 1E11 km

Alex Woronow

Original
D

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	8960786
PixInsight job	GNNGACB1TIVM29GETEFZZU63PQV0GOKW
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	20h34m51s.465
RA (top/left)	20h34m45s.107
RA (top/right)	20h37m21s.836
RA (bottom/right)	20h34m58s.228
RA (bottom/left)	20h32m21s.290

Dec (center)	+60°09′09″.36
Dec (top/left)	+59°50′28″.14
Dec (top/right)	+60°08′15″.50
Dec (bottom/right)	+60°27′51″.21
Dec (bottom/left)	+60°09′52″.92

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

NGC 6946: Hiding in Our Galactic Plane

NGC 6946: Hiding in Our Galactic Plane

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Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

NGC 6946: Hiding in Our Galactic Plane

NGC 6946: Hiding in Our Galactic Plane

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