It is always difficult to decide about re-shooting astronomical objects. The invested time is often much longer than for the initial pictire and there is still the risk of running into a result which is not significantly better. But this time I dared to give it a try. One of my older pictures still bothered me with its suboptimal collimation and after having re-aligned my favourite optics I thought more aperture and more focal length would make a difference. And what difference it made!

From the two objects in the frame of my 6" newton telescope, I chose NGC 6946 for a close-up, which is the more complex and more difficult object, for a deep 5 hours-exposure. The air was so steady that the sharpness of the picture was around 2 arc-seconds across the entire frame. Thats 1/1000 of the apparent moon diameter! I shot from dusk till dawn, and the only pity was that I had to throw away one extra hour of exposure because of poor guiding - I think it was because of cable tear...

If you would like to zoom into the picture at higher power and not be afraid of a little bit of extra niose, feel free to use the double resolution version.

The beautiful galaxy might have been one of the brighter examples in the northern sky if it wasn't located so close to the dusty milky way disc through which we watch this 6-armed showcase spiral. The interstellar matter from our own galaxy obscures the object so severely that it would be 2 magnitudes (a factor of more than 6) brighter if we could observe it through some clear galactic window like the spring time constellations. The brownish colour of the galaxy is also indicative for all the stuff between NGC 6946 and planet earth.

Like many of the not overly bright celestial objects in the northern sky this galaxy was discovered by Wilhelm Herschel.
It is interesting to know that the rate of supernovae discovered in NGC 6946 is really outstanding.
Ten supernovae within just 100 years indicate vivid star formation activity. Some sources call it the "Fireworks Galaxy".