SOCO IMAGE GALLERY


 

NGC 6939 and NGC 6946   

NGC 6939 and NGC 6946 is probably one of the most attractive pairings of dissimilar astronomical objects in the sky. NGC 6939 is an open cluster located within our Milky Way galaxy, while NGC 6946 is a separate spiral galaxy located around 19 million LY from us. Visually, both lie within the stream of the Milky Way in the constellations Cepheus and Cygnus (NGC 6946 is split by the two constellations). NGC 6946 has a visual magnitude of 8.8 but experiences significant reddening due to the intervening dust in our Milky Way galaxy. NGC 6939 lies much closer to us, at a distance of around 3900 LY. It has a visual magnitude of 7.8 and an apparent diameter of around 7 arc-min, which is a bit smaller than NGC 6946 (around 10-11 arc-min).
With a diameter of around 40,000 LY, NGC 6946 is about one-third the size of our Milky Way galaxy. It is notable for the observed occurrence of eight supernovas within it, the most of any galaxy to date. The bright bluish-white star lying between the two objects is HD 196085, which has a visual magnitude of 7.17 and lies at a distance of 224.9 LY.

Date(s) Acquired: 6 November 2015
Telescope: Orion 120mm EON Apochromatic Refractor
Camera: QSI Model 583 with Optec NextGEN Ultra Widefield 0.7X Telecompressor

 

   Exposure Time (min) 
   Number of Exposures
   RGB
   2
   Hα
   -
   Hβ
   -
   OIII
   -
   RGB
   16
   Hα
   0
   Hβ
   0
   OIII
   0

 

Processing:
Master red, green, and blue images created using SuperSIAM.
Color composite image created using Basic Processing Procedure III.
Color composite image contrast-stretched using Adobe Photoshop.




 

 

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