By: James, Forrest, Emily, Dahlia, and Crystal Maxwell
Taken: Oct. 10-11, 2010 (9:30PM-1:30AM), at the Caldera Rim Observatory, Near Jemez Springs, NM.
This shows NGC 6946, the fireworks galaxy, all by itself among a sea of Milky Way stars. It is 22 million light years distant, more than 1000 times farther than most of the stars in the frame.
Two hours +10 minutes of 90 second exposures, using a cooled Canon 400D DSLR (at about 25 deg. F), Meade 10" F/4 Schmidt Newtonian, Baader coma corrector, 5" guidescope with autoguider, and Losmandy G-11 mount. Frames were stacked and processed in Nebulosity, then further processed in PhotoBrush and Photofiltre.