> NGC 6946 was the most interesting deepsky object I observed in the midst of
> two very absorbing nights. At the border of Cepheus and Cygnus, there's a
> bright OC sitting there, 6939, and whoa a spread-out face-on moves into
> view. In Rashad's 12.5 and my 11, it looked blown apart, disrupted. In a
> bigger scope, according to Steve Gottlieb, 6946 has one distinct long
> spiral arm and looks like a shrimp. Burnham has an arresting picture of
> this galaxy, and explains what Rashad and I saw, that in medium apertures
> you see the bright core and not the arms, which explains the rough square
> shape we saw.
On of my favorites - What a remarkable galaxy! These notes were taken in the
White Mountains (east of Bishop) a few years back at 12,500 feet!!
17.5": bright, very large, 6' diameter to main body, elongated 3:2 ~E-W.
Three arms are visible. A long bright arm is attached at the north side of
the core and trails to the east. This eastern arm splits; a short fainter
branch bends south following the core and a long curving bright arm
terminates with a very faint, very small HII knot. On the west side a
fainter arm shoots sharply to the north from the core. These outer arms
significantly increase the diameter of the main body. The galaxy has a very
large brighter middle but the core is just a very small brighter region close
SW of the geometric center. A very faint stellar nucleus was visible with
direct vision.
Steve Gottlieb
Adventures in Deep Space NGC/IC Project
http://redshift.home.pipeline.com/ http://www.ngcic.org/