The Fireworks Galaxy (a.k.a., NGC 6946), viewed from my back patio from August-October 2023.
Figure 1. The Fireworks Galaxy (NGC 6946).
The Fireworks Galaxy is a face on, intermediate, double-barred spiral galaxy straddling the boundaries of the constellations Cepheus and Cygnus.
Looking at NGC 6946, I can’t help but recall the foolishness of youth and the Demon Squirrel Incident of ’92. (Disclaimer: The following story depicts irresponsible behavior and dangerous misuse of fireworks. While based on true events, I may have misremembered various details of that night, over thirty years ago. Check your local laws.)
We blamed the incident on the box of fireworks. We didn’t have to. Nobody was seriously injured (luckily). No property was seriously damaged (that we know of). We could have scapegoated any one of us, and nobody would have objected, even the scapegoat. But blame invites gossip, and the incident was best forgotten, immediately. We blamed the empty box of fireworks because the box was mute. Simple.
I won’t name names, but here’s the gist of it: On the outskirts of a town in the middle of Kansas, a young woman – a close friend – came to keep an eye on her parents’ house while they were away for the weekend. It was far enough outside of town to circumvent the light pollution. The night skies were fabulous. She invited us over for an impromptu gathering, but not for stargazing; we didn’t bring telescopes or binoculars. No, rather than enjoy the night sky, we were going to spite it with a load of fireworks.
Well, a modest box of Missouri fireworks. I’m guessing they were from Missouri. Everybody from America’s heartland knows that if you want good fireworks, you’ll have to take a covert road trip to Missouri. One of us must have done so. None of us had money back then, however, so the box was pretty sparse: an assortment of Roman candles, bottle rockets, etc., maybe one or two larger items, but that’s about it. Nothing too fancy, but at least we had plenty of the basics. I’m getting ahead of myself.
We early arrivers greeted the host and surveyed the front yard, preparing to help her get things set up. Yes, there was plenty of space. The location was not what I would call “rural” Kansas, but it was a place right next to it. Neighboring houses were still in earshot, but we hoped their occupants wouldn’t complain. An old, intriguing edifice stood across the street, but was unoccupied, so we were good to go on that front. We cracked open a few cans of beer while we pondered the music situation.
Cranking up a car’s stereo in the driveway worked as a temporary solution until somebody brought a boom box. Or better yet, we could bring the Hi-Fi up from the basement and put it on a folding table in the yard. Oh, yes, the latter was the better solution. A few more cans of beer, some furniture hauling, and the music situation was solved as more people showed up.
Skinny Puppy played through the tower speakers, now in the front yard, when the guy with the fireworks appeared, clad in a dark t-shirt and black jeans, lugging the box from his trunk and carrying it over to the folding table, just in time for dusk. The host of the party ran over to investigate the haul, “Oh, good! You got bottle rockets,” she grinned widely. “Let’s shoot some to go off over there.” Her index finger gracefully slipped out of her black leather jacket’s sleeve of her extended arm, pointing to an old and empty, yet rather ornate building across the way on the other side of the street. “The people that used to be in that place,” she hesitated with her words, “they always pissed me off when I was a kid.”
It was about that time, when reaching into the box for bottle rockets, that we realized that we didn’t have any bottles. We had been drinking out of cans the whole while. We had to improvise.
We tried launching rockets out of empty cans, but they lacked stability; the cans would fall over before ignition, and the bottle rockets would skip across the ground randomly. One popped as it hit somebody’s knee. That wasn’t going to do. The host made a few quick phone calls to then-absent latecomers to solve the bottle problem. Of course, she had to use her parents’ landline telephone since cellphones weren’t a thing yet.
Longneck bottles were on the way (and more beer in them too!), but what to do in the meantime, we pondered. It would take time for the bottles to arrive. They had to travel all the way from town. We looked around the yard for any hollow, cylindrical object that might work. The only thing we found was a narrow, metal pipe under the crawlspace that was packed with dirt on one end and hollow at the other, albeit rusted and craggy. We dropped a lit bottle rocket inside, but it just got stuck. I have to say, it did make a neat sound that resonated with reverb when it popped. Novel sound aside, it wasn’t the same. And it was kind of a waste of a bottle rocket too, since you could just drop in a ladyfinger for the sound.
The guy who originally brought the fireworks -- I’ll call him “Fireworks Guy” -- finally said, “Screw it. We don’t need bottles.” With a lighter in one hand and the bamboo dowl of a rocket in the other, he lit the wick, bent his knees, and with a long, arcing swing of his arm he lobbed the bottle rocket straight up into the air.
We all gasped, hoping it would ignite before it turned around and pointed toward us. Our fears were alleviated when it did ignite just fine and seamlessly streaked straight up. We collectively sighed with relief and even a little awe. It was so elegant. I fancied myself as having lots of bottle rocket experience as a child, but that was the first time I witnessed someone launching one freehand. I was impressed.
Several of us tried to reproduce the feat. The thing is though, Fireworks Guy was tall, and albeit lanky, was coordinated. My bottle rocket, conversely, hit the back of my calf on my swing up, then just tumbled out of control. One girl, after lighting her bottle rocket, panicked, and it zipped off horizontally, right into somebody’s chest. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but it was loud, popping so close to our ears. It was the kind of thing that could cause ear damage if we weren’t careful (not to mention burns and blindness and whatnot). But for whatever reason, it was at that moment we collectively decided that that was exactly the risk we wanted.
Someone cranked up the music volume and we all proceeded lob lit bottle rockets at each other. “Our leather jackets will protect us,” we said to ourselves. (They didn’t.)
As if on cue, the longneck bottles of beer arrived. We each chugged one, leaving us each our own bottle, thus facilitating better aim when we shot at one another.
The Roman candles came out right as the mosh pit was forming. If you’re not familiar with Roman candles, they’re cardboard tubes that periodically spew fireballs. The Roman candle wielders were mostly courteous though, not aiming at anybody’s faces (mostly), but rather shooting the arcing fireballs into the air, providing well needed aerial lights for the mosh pit. As a matter of fact, they were about the only source of light at all. Each of us would circulate between beer, moshing, and dutifully shooting fireworks at or near the pit.
So, there we were, drinking and slamming into one another to the heavy bass of the screaming music, all while dodging bottle rockets and fireballs, under the night sky in the middle of Kansas. We felt fearless and invincible. Hell, we *were* fearless and invincible. (We weren’t.) OK, we were having a blast. And yes, it was all fun and games until somebody decided to light up the Twirly-Flying-Squirrely.
The Twirly-Flying-Squirrely was one of the bigger items in the fireworks box. It was not particularly high-end, not like those professional items that blast nearly into the stratosphere, producing a beautiful bouquet visible from a mile away. No, not like that. It was much simpler and cheaper. But it must be said it was a solid step up from our bottle rockets and Roman candles.
Presumably, if lit/launched as directed, starting from a solid, flat surface, and a fair distance away from any onlookers, the Twirly-Flying-Squirrely would rise relatively slowly, emitting a consistent shower of colorful sparks in all horizontal directions, thus producing a colorful, swirling paraboloid of sparks as it rose many tens of meters into the air. And it would whistle as it rose. Lots of sparks and whistling. Miniature versions of this item were far more common, but they shot up quickly and lasted only a second or two. The Twirly-Flying-Squirrely was the scaled-up version of this: It was bigger, rose higher and lasted longer. That about sums it up -- if launched as directed, that is. But as I’m sure you’ve deduced by now, that’s not how it went.
I shall henceforth refer to the Twirly-Flying-Squirrely as the “demon squirrel.”
Ministry was blaring from the Hi-Fi, as I recall. Then all hell broke loose. I don’t know who lit the demon squirrel, or more importantly in what way. But it wasn’t as directed, that’s for sure. Nothing about any of it went as directed.
Without any announcement or warning, a shrieking howl came out of nowhere – a deafening, ghostly howl – louder than the Ministry -- louder than the thoughts in our heads, accompanied by what can only be described as a lightning-fast wagon-wheel of flame and damnation, encircled the mosh pit, startling us out of our skins as it corralled us together. Most of us were deer in the headlights, but some fled in a panic, only for the demon squirrel to loop around in a figure-eight, herding us back together.
Within the chaos, people collided like marbles in a blender, all without the comradery and wherewithal usually found in a mosh pit. It was almost impossible for those within to see. The only light came from the demon squirrel itself, and nearly everybody was dressed in black. Then there was the smoke. Although not an advertised feature of the Twirly-Flying-Squirrely, the demon squirrel belched out a continuous and copious cloud together with its flaming devil-howl. One lucky soul -- who was coming back from the toilet -- witnessed the turmoil from a short distance and was able to (in the aftermath) describe the chaos as, “an entropic goth/punk stew of mayhem.”
The demon squirrel circled us several times, deciding whom to attack and in what order. It made its move and dashed directly into the crowd. It ricocheted off one black jacket and into another and another. With surgical precision, the demon squirrel tripped at least two fleeing victims by kicking their Doc Martin’s until they fell face-first into the boot trodden, beer mud.
The possessed squirrel-devil then regrouped itself, momentarily hovering at eye level, and punched the ground twice, and back up to eye level – not bouncing, but rather like a silverback Gorilla pounding its chest, it pounded the ground with deliberation, as a show of dominance. The demon squirrel then torpedoed toward the head of its final victim -- a girl with long, curly hair -- before immediately going dark. In the pitch blackness of night, there was only a bone-chilling scream.
The music went quiet, but the screaming continued as we scrambled in the darkness to figure out what was happening. The host turned on her parents’ floodlights, allowing us to see as we gathered our senses. The girl with the long hair was beside herself, arms flailing, as the fog cleared around her.
We soon deduced that although the demon squirrel’s propellent depleted – and not a moment too soon -- its burning hot plastic and carboard devil-corpse became twisted in her long hair via residual angular momentum alone. She had succeeded in whacking it out of her hair and away to the ground. She was OK, although still visibly shaken up. Fortunately, there were no significant burns, but she had felt the heat of the demon squirrel as she slapped it away.
The evening’s revelry took on a more somber tone after that. Some suddenly felt the need to start cleaning and began picking up empties and removing cigarette butts from the lawn. The music was turned back on, but the selection was more mellow. The girl with the curly hair cheered up, and was even able to laugh about the event, albeit with a bit of trepidation. A conversation about career goals sprang up at one corner of the yard, while proper study habits were being discussed at another. Risk avoidance underpinned themes.
Some partygoers were sobering up, and a small handful didn’t drink, so getting people back to town safely wasn’t an issue. By the end of night there were just a few of the host’s close friends left.
Much of the furniture was put back in its proper place, and the porch lights were turned off. The Milky Way was visible, arching across the sky. We lounged by the front steps and a low-sitting folding chair that was left out.
Using a bottle propped up on a brick and some rocks, we launched a few of the remaining bottle rockets in the direction of the ornate, vacant building across the way on the other side of the street, for good measure. The distance to the building was farther than the rockets’ range, but their popping might have been annoying had anybody been there.
The host was about to launch the final bottle rocket when she stopped short. She grabbed the longneck bottle and placed it vertically on the level brick. She looked to the unoccupied building, “That’s enough for them, tonight,” she said with a long sigh, presumably referring to some old memories, “I think they’ve learned their lesson for now.” After a pause she turned to face us with a smile and flicked her front lock of hair away from her eyes, “this one’s for us,” she grinned. She lit the fuse and together we all watched the bottle rocket shoot into the air above, high into the sky.
(Back to the image for a moment)
Equipment:
Meade 10" LX200-ACF fork mounted on an equatorial wedge.
Off-axis guider (OAG) with guide camera.
Optolong broadband filter set.
Optolong L-Pro filter
Optolong 3 nm Hα filter
ZWO ASI6200MM-Pro main camera.
Software:
Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy (N.I.N.A.)
PHD2 guiding
PixInsight with RC-Astro plugins
Integration:
San Diego, California
Aug-Oct 2023
Bortle class 7 (maybe 8 ) skies
All subframes binned 3×3
R: 273×2 min = 9.1 hrs
G: 281×2 min = 9.37 hrs
B: 362×2 min = 12.07 hrs
L-Pro: 457×2 min = 15.23 hrs
Hα: 59×10 min = 9.83 hrs
Total integration time: 55.60 hours
Epilogue:
Some time after the demon squirrel incident – although I can’t remember if it was a week or a year – the host of that get-together gained permission (on the up-and-up) to access the inside of that interesting looking building across the way on the other side of the street. She invited me and another friend to go with her. She (the host) and I brought our cameras to photograph the interior architecture.
Here's a photograph of the building’s interior that I took with my trusty Minolta loaded with black-and-white film during that outing.
Figure 2. Photograph of interior architecture. Camera: Minolta X-700. Film: T-Max 100.
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