How long should I image the Crab Nebula with the Origin from a Bortle 6 sky?

About 10 min of total integration for a solid image, or 41 min for a showpiece. A quick look takes 3 min.

How many subs is that on the Origin?

At the default 10 s sub length, 62 subs for a solid image from Bortle 6 and 30 from Bortle 3.

Does a dual-band filter help on the Crab Nebula?

Yes. It is an emission-line object; from Bortle 6 the filter cuts the solid-image time from 10 min to 7 min.

How long to image the Crab Nebula with the Celestron Origin

From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Celestron Origin needs about 10 min (62 subs of 10 s) for a solid image of the Crab Nebula. A quick look takes 3 min; a showpiece 41 min. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 5 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is skyglow, so a darker site or a filter helps more than longer subs. In this scope's field it fills 12% of the frame’s short side.

Crab Nebula with the Celestron Origin: 10 s subs.
Sky	Quick lookTarget obvious, still noisy	SolidClean enough to share	ShowpieceSmooth faint detail, print-worthy
Bortle 1Excellent dark site	2 min10 subs	5 min30 subs	15 min90 subs
Bortle 2Typical dark site	2 min10 subs	5 min30 subs	16 min95 subs
Bortle 3Rural	2 min10 subs	5 min30 subs	17 min104 subs
Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition	2 min10 subs	5 min32 subs	21 min126 subs
Bortle 5Suburban	2 min10 subs	7 min40 subs	27 min160 subs
Bortle 6Bright suburban	3 min16 subs	10 min62 subs	41 min245 subs
Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition	4 min26 subs	17 min102 subs	1 h 08 min408 subs
Bortle 8City	7 min42 subs	27 min165 subs	1 h 50 min660 subs
Bortle 9Inner city	12 min75 subs	50 min300 subs	3 h 20 min1,198 subs

Adjust in the calculator

Power and kit for this session

Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 13 min of run time. The Origin’s battery (rated about 6 h) should cover it; a power bank still keeps the phone running the app alive. (Bortle 6, solid image; we allow 30% over the integration time, and 30% off the battery for a December night.)

portable power station 300W AC outletRuns the supplied 12 V adapter in the field; the dew shield and heater are already built in.
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red LED head torchRed light keeps your night vision; white light costs you twenty minutes of dark adaptation every time.
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How it frames

The Crab Nebula is 6′ × 4′ across. The Origin frames 1.27° × 0.85° at 1.48″ per pixel, so it fills 12% of the frame’s short side.

Longer subs

10 s auto subs (15 s with the Nebula Filter); manual 1 to 30 s on the alt-az mount, longer only with the EQ wedge, and 60 s and up needs the StarSense Autoguider too. Time for a solid image by sub length:

Sub length	Bortle 3	Bortle 5	Bortle 7
10 s	5 min30 subs	7 min40 subs	17 min102 subs
15 s	8 min30 subs	8 min30 subs	17 min68 subs
30 s	15 min30 subs	15 min30 subs	17 min34 subs

With and without the dual-band filter

Solid quality, default sub length.
Filter	Bortle 3	Bortle 5	Bortle 7
No filter	5 min30 subs	7 min40 subs	17 min102 subs
dual-band (Nebula Filter), drawer	5 min30 subs	6 min34 subs	9 min53 subs

The Origin has no built-in dual-band filter. Filter drawer takes 1.25-inch or 2-inch filters, including dual-band; Celestron sells an optional Nebula Filter. On an emission target like this it is the single biggest upgrade you can make.

About the Crab Nebula

The remains of the supernova of 1054, a tangle of filaments around a pulsar. Small but bright enough for a good result in an evening.

M1, NGC 1952 · Supernova remnant in Taurus · magnitude 8.4 · 6′ × 4′ · best in Nov, Dec, Jan. Reachable from mid-northern latitudes (UK, northern US, central Europe) and from the south.

Supernova remnants are emission-line objects, strong in both hydrogen-alpha and OIII, and their filaments are thin, so pixel scale matters as much as aperture. A dual-band filter is essential from any lit sky and still helps under a dark one. These are long-integration targets; plan on several sessions and stack across nights.

About the Celestron Origin

The first-generation Origin: a 6-inch f/2.2 RASA in a smart package and the fastest system here by a wide margin. Superseded by the Mark II in late 2025 and no longer sold new; Celestron offers a camera upgrade to the Mark II sensor.

10 s auto subs (15 s with the Nebula Filter); manual 1 to 30 s on the alt-az mount, longer only with the EQ wedge, and 60 s and up needs the StarSense Autoguider too. Filter drawer takes 1.25-inch or 2-inch filters, including dual-band; Celestron sells an optional Nebula Filter.

Longer subs matter most under dark skies, where read noise rather than skyglow sets the floor. From a city the difference between 10 s and 30 s subs is small; from a rural site it can halve the total time, especially with a dual-band filter in place.

Stack across nights. Every smart scope app can continue a stack or you can combine the saved frames on a computer; the figures here are totals, not single-session limits.

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Imaged the Crab Nebula with your Origin? Did the solid figure match?Anonymous, one tap. It is how the model gets calibrated.

Have an image of the Crab Nebula from a Origin? Email it with your total time and sky to [email protected] and it goes here, credited.

Same target, other telescopes

All telescopes for the Crab Nebula · All targets for the Origin