Wilton Astronomy is hard at work! Firework Galaxy, referred to as NGC 6946, is located about 22 million light-years away from Earth. Meaning if you traveled at the speed of light, clocked at 299,792,458 meters per second, it would take you approximately 22 million years to reach the Firework Galaxy. This also means that the photons (light waves/particles) from the Firework Galaxy took 22 million years to reach us. Technically, you are looking into the past of the Firework Galaxy, as it was 22 million years ago. But where does the galaxy get its name? The term “Firework” comes from the unusual number of supernovae that occur inside the galaxy. A supernova is a huge explosion, commonly referred to as the “death” of a star. Supernovae emit very powerful and bright light, giving “Firework Galaxy” its well-deserved name. This image is brought to you by the Wilton Astronomy Class, with the generous help of Grant Harkness. While the Wilton Observatory mount computer is in the “shop” for repairs (hopefully), students were treated to Grant’s setup that gives him the ability to host a mobile observatory. On Saturday, Sept. 27th, Grant set up two telescopes at West View Park in Wilton. Through the use of his Celestron Origin, hundreds of pictures were taken of the Firework Galaxy’s area in the sky. These pictures were then stacked and corrected hundreds of times to produce the image you see now. The whole process took multiple hours due to the low number of photons hitting the Earth from that far away and the need to stack so many pictures. Thanks, Grant! (Write-up and photo editing by Oaklan Jirak) (fb)

Recently, while taking a series of photographs of the Sun using our solar scope, we caught this! I wish I would have looked up where it was heading. It messed up our pictures a bit, but made for a pretty neat shot itself, especially with the granulations and sunspots visible! (fb)