Date Posted: 6/28/2014
Date Taken: 5/23/2014, 5/25/2014, 6/1/2014, 6/6/2014, 7/4/2014
Scope: Planewave CDK 12.5 f/8, 2541mm
Camera: SBIG STL-11000 with Astrodon Tru-Balance E-Series Gen2 filters
Temp: -15C
Mount: Losmandy Titan
Guiding: SSAG, Celestron 80mm guide scope, 600mm.
Exposure: LRGB 165:70:75:70 (L) 33x5m, binned 1x1. RGB each Nx5m, binned 2x2

Calibrated and Stacked with CCDStack2; RGB combine and DDP with MaximDL. Processed with CS4.

NGC 6946 is a colorful, facing spiral galaxy about 25 million light years away in Cepheus. Also catalogued as Caldwell 12, it is known as the Fireworks Galaxy because of its prominent and numerous prodigious Ha regions, active ongoing star formation, and frequent supernovae that have occurred there (10 known in the last century).

This is a tweak of the original 2014 image to sharpen the galaxy and decrease star sizes. It's purely coincidence that I ended up shooting the Fireworks Galaxy on July 4.