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

NGC 6946, François Régembal
NGC 6946
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 6946

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Description

NGC 6946 (also known as the Fireworks Galaxy or Caldwell 12) 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. Discovered by William Herschel on 9 September 1798, this well-studied galaxy has a diameter of approximately 40,000 light-years[dubious – discuss] , about one-third of the Milky Way's size and it contains roughly half the number of stars as the Milky Way. It is heavily obscured by interstellar matter due to its location close to the galactic plane of the Milky Way, with a dimming of ~1.5 magnitudes. Due to its prodigious star formation it has been classified as an active starburst galaxy.

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NGC 6946, François Régembal