NGC 6946 and NGC 6939.

Face-on spiral galaxy NGC 6946 and open star cluster NGC 6939 share this cosmic snapshot, composed with over 68 hours of image data captured with a small telescope on planet Earth. The field of view spans spans about 1 degree or 2 full moons on the sky toward the northern constellation Cepheus . Seen through faint interstellar dust clouds near the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the stars of open cluster NGC 6939 are 5,600 light-years in the distance, near bottom right in the frame. Face-on spiral galaxy NGC 6946 is at top left, but lies some 22 million light-years away. In the last 100 years, 10 supernovae have been discovered in NGC 6946 , the latest one seen in 2017 . By comparison, the average rate of supernovae in our Milky Way is about 1 every 100 years or so . Of course, NGC 6946 is also known as The Fireworks Galaxy .