NGC 6946 is a face on spiral galaxy located on the border of Cepheus and Cygnus. This beautiful galaxy is renowned for having an unusually large number of supernovae, thus earning its title as the "Fireworks Galaxy".

In this image, North is Up. This image is cropped to 50% of the original full frame.

Exposure Details
Lens	Celestron C-8 SCT with Celestron focal reducer
Focal Length	1260mm
Focal Ratio	f/6.3
Mount	Schaefer GEM - 7 1/2
Guiding	80mm f/11 guidescope with PHD Guiding
Camera	Canon 20Da
Exposure	212 subexposures of 180 seconds each at ISO 1600 - over 10 1/2 hours total
Calibration	30 darks, 30 flats, 30 bias
Date	August 25, 27, and 28, 2011
Temperature	68F on 8/25, 69F on 8/27 and 8/28
SQM Reading
Seeing	4 of 5 on all 3 nights
Location	Pine Mountain Club, California
Software Used	Images Plus 4.0 for camera control, calibration, stacking and digital development. Photoshop CS5 used for flat fielding, shadows and highlights, color balance, saturation, high pass filter. Carboni Actions for star saturation adjustments, HLVG for additional color correction.
Notes	This is my longest exposure to date, and I think the extra integration time paid off. A previously processed versin of this image was chosen Digital Astro Challenge Photo 2nd place for August 2011 in the Galaxy Category. This prior version is Here.