Spiral Galaxy NGC 6946
About this image
This is a two-minute exposure taken
on the night of September 26th 1994 (UT of observation 27/09/94:06:30)
with the 1k detector.
This photograph shows a region 200 arc seconds square. The brightness
of the image has been converted to color (a technique called
pseudo-color) using a simple orange/red-shading-to-white
transformation, purely to make a more attractive picture.
Sky conditions during this phase of the commissioning were not ideal, and
this image has a "seeing" measurement (average
FWHM of several stars) of over 1.1 arc seconds.
About this object
NGC 6946 (Arp 29) is a face-on SAB(rs)cd galaxy in the constellation Cygnus.
This classification refers to the presence of a small core with multiple
well-defined arms (cd), with a poorly-developed bar across the middle (AB)
and an inner confused ring (rs).
Nearly twenty million light years from Earth, it is over seventy thousand
light years across and more than fills this picture.
At least one supernova has been observed in this galaxy.
Location: 20 33.8 +59 59 (1950.0)