NGC 6946 - the fireworks galaxy

Hey, shot my first galaxy last night and wow what a beauty.....NGC 6946 The Fireworks Galaxy so called because there has been eight supernovas discovered in it so far.

Made all the more sweet when I couldn't actually see it in the eyepiece
It has a surface brightness of 13.5 even though it is supposed to be 8 mag. I just opened up trusty Carte de Ciel to confirm where it was, (three stars in a triangle and centered in the eyepiece). No processing has been done other then the rudementary adjustments in DSS.

I took 85x15s exposures of which 80 were eventually stacked in DSS (gotta love that piece of software!!!!!) and using 0.5 atik focal reducer.



Next up I tried another go at m57. 30x30sec and even managed to bag the little runty galaxy IC 1296 at 15 mag to the left.

Great shot David, I've never seen the Fireworks Galaxy before - I'll put it on my list to seek out over the coming months!

Great shots David, 85x15sec shots, !!, that's some good going.
I wonder could you do a little unsharpe masking with the ring nebula shot to slightly sharpen it up abit.?

Great images Dave. I was out your neck of the woods last night at a wedding and the sky looked fab.

Michael.

Nice one Dave, that camera really does give plenty of bang for the bucks. Did you try for the Owl last night also?

Hey great stuff there Dave looks like your getting the hang of it,what do you think of the camera?I've just taken my new atik 16 hc mono out of the box and cant wait to get out so watch this space.