NGC6946 - The Fireworks Galaxy
Description: NGC6946 is a face on spiral located in the constellation of Cepheus. I've heard it called the Fireworks Galaxy, but this name may not be universally used. This image was taken on July 4, 2008 at the Golden State Star Party near Adin in northeastern California. I've taken a number of images of this object. I like it because of the very rich star field. It appears in a busy part of the sky where it's rare to see a face on spiral. Because my camera is not anti-blooming, I have to go with shorter exposures than I might otherwise do or else the brighter stars will bloom. I also always seem to run out of total time on this one. I'm always fighting dawn light while I'm trying to do the color exposures. Someday I will start imaging earlier and see if I can improve on the color fidelity.
Equipment: The image was taken with an 8" Meade LX200ACF telescope on a Celestron CGE mount. The camera was an SBIG ST10XME with an Astro-Physics .67 Telecompressor and Astrodon filters. The guide scope and camera were an Orion ST-80 refractor with an SBIG remote guide head attached to the ST10. Focusing was done with an Optec TCF-S focuser with temperature compensation turned off.
Exposures: 17x180 seconds luminance binned 1x1; 10x180 seconds red, 10x180 seconds green, 8x180 seconds blue exposures binned 2x2.
Processing: Bias, dark & flat calibration, image registration & color registration were done in Maxim/DL. Curves, levels, LRGB combination, zone sharpening & noise reduction were done in Photoshop CS2. Gradient processing was done with GradientXTerminator.
Click on image for full resolution.