Fireworks Galaxy (NGC 6946)
A face-on spiral galaxy on the border of Cepheus and Cygnus, only 12° from the plane of the Milky Way, so we see it through our own galaxy's dust. It is rich in gas: maps of its starlight and gas put a quarter of its visible mass in hydrogen and molecular clouds.
Galaxy in Cepheus. Magnitude 9.1.
Can you see it from Guyana?
From Georgetown (6.8° N) it climbs to 37° above the northern horizon at its highest; from Lethem (3.4° N), to 33° above the northern horizon. It is highest at midnight on the night of 28 Jul, in the middle of its season. The page works out tonight's rise, highest point and set for both towns in Guyana time (UTC-4), and where the Moon is.
What you'll see
- Your eyes: Not visible to the eye. It lies 5.8° west of Alderamin.
- 10x50 binoculars: Just detectable in binoculars from a dark site, as a faint smudge.
- A small telescope (80 to 100 mm): A large, faint round glow with a slightly brighter middle; a dark site and low power.
- A camera: Tiny on camera: it needs 2,000 mm or more of focal length on a tracking mount.
How big, how bright, how far
- Size on the sky: 11.4′ × 10.8′, 37% of the Moon's width (the Moon is about 31′ wide).
- Brightness: magnitude 9.1. Fainter than the faintest stars in Georgetown (4.3) and Lethem (6.0): binoculars or a telescope.
- Distance: 18 million light-years. The light reaching your eye left it about 18 million years ago.
- True size: 58,000 light-years across its catalogued outline; light crosses it in 58,000 years.
Apparent size from OpenNGC (Mattia Verga), CC-BY-SA-4.0.
What it is made of
- Type
- Spiral galaxy, seen face-on
Measured: What its visible mass is made of: stars and gas, not dark matter.
- Stars: 75.4%, from its infrared light
- Atomic gas: 15.1%, hydrogen, from 21 cm radio maps
- Molecular gas: 9.5%, from carbon monoxide maps
Each mass is given to a tenth of a dex, so each share is good to about a quarter of itself. Dark matter is not counted. Leroy et al. 2008, AJ 136, 2782, Table 4 (VizieR J/AJ/136/2782), NGC 6946: log stellar mass 10.5, atomic gas 9.8, molecular gas 9.6 (Suns). Shares do not depend on the distance the paper adopted.
Also in it, not measured:
- Spiral arms: lit by young stars
- Dark matter halo: not in this tally; seen only by its gravity
How we know: Distance from the median of 32 published estimates by several methods (no two direct ones agree to combine): NED-D (NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database, redshift-independent distances), median of 32 estimates: 5.38 Mpc, 4.70-5.90 Mpc (16th-84th percentile); e.g. 2015ApJ...799..215P, 2014ApJ...782...98B, 2014AJ....148..107R; retrieved 2026-10-21. True size: the apparent size times the distance (apparent size: OpenNGC (Mattia Verga, CC BY-SA 4.0), commit 4e2398a2).
More deep-sky objects: NGC 7331 (Galaxy) · NGC 5866 (often identified as M102) · M110 (Galaxy) · Andromeda Galaxy (M31) · M32 (Galaxy) · Pinwheel Galaxy (M101)