How long to image the Sombrero Galaxy with the Unistellar Odyssey
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Unistellar Odyssey needs about 3 h 11 min (2,865 subs of 4 s) for a solid image of the Sombrero Galaxy. A quick look takes 48 min; a showpiece 13 h. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 2 h 10 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is a mix of skyglow and read noise. In this scope's field it fills 27% of the frame’s short side.
| Sky | Quick lookTarget obvious, still noisy | SolidClean enough to share | ShowpieceSmooth faint detail, print-worthy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bortle 1Excellent dark site | 31 min466 subs | 2 h 04 min1,864 subs | 8 h 17 min7,455 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 32 min474 subs | 2 h 06 min1,895 subs | 8 h 25 min7,578 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 33 min489 subs | 2 h 10 min1,953 subs | 8 h 41 min7,811 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 35 min524 subs | 2 h 20 min2,094 subs | 9 h 18 min8,374 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 39 min580 subs | 2 h 34 min2,317 subs | 10 h9,268 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 48 min717 subs | 3 h 11 min2,865 subs | 13 h11,460 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 1 h 05 min978 subs | 4 h 21 min3,909 subs | 17 h15,636 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 1 h 32 min1,383 subs | 6 h 09 min5,531 subs | 25 h22,121 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 2 h 30 min2,247 subs | 9 h 59 min8,988 subs | 40 h35,952 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 4 h 08 min of run time. The Odyssey’s battery (rated about 5 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.)
- USB power bank 20000mAh 5V 2.4AUnistellar says plain 5 V 2.4 A and warns against fast or adaptive chargers.
- red LED head torchRed light keeps your night vision; white light costs you twenty minutes of dark adaptation every time.
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Everything that fits the Odyssey →
How it frames
The Sombrero Galaxy is 9′ × 4′ across. The Odyssey frames 0.75° × 0.56° at 0.93″ per pixel, so it fills 27% of the frame’s short side.
About the Sombrero Galaxy
The bright bulge and knife-edge dust lane are obvious within an hour. Low from northern Europe, so catch it near the meridian.
M104, NGC 4594 · Galaxy in Virgo · magnitude 8.0 · 9′ × 4′ · best in Mar, Apr, May. Reachable from mid-northern latitudes (UK, northern US, central Europe) and from the south.
Galaxies are broadband targets: their light is mostly starlight spread across the spectrum, so a dual-band filter throws most of it away and makes things slower, not faster. Shoot without a filter (or with a plain UV/IR cut) and rely on total time and a dark sky. The core of a galaxy is usually many times brighter than its outer disc, so a short stack shows the nucleus long before the arms; the figures here are for the arms and disc, not the core.
Field rotation in Alt-Az mode crops the edges of the stack over a long session, so on a big galaxy re-centre now and then or use EQ mode where your scope supports it.
About the Unistellar Odyssey
Unistellar’s compact 85 mm with autofocus and tiny pixels. Sharp, but the fine sampling costs time on faint extended targets. The Odyssey Pro is the same telescope with an eyepiece added, so these figures apply to both.
Fixed 4 s subs in Enhanced Vision; they cannot be changed. No filter option; Unistellar says third-party filters cannot be fitted to the Odyssey.
The Odyssey uses fixed 4 s subs, so the only levers you have are the sky you shoot from, the filter, and total time.
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.
Have an image of the Sombrero Galaxy from a Odyssey? Email it with your total time and sky to [email protected] and it goes here, credited.
Same target, other telescopes
- Sombrero Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S50: 47 min from Bortle 6
- Sombrero Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: 51 min from Bortle 6
- Sombrero Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S30: 49 min from Bortle 6
- Sombrero Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro: 54 min from Bortle 6
- Sombrero Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF 3: 1 h 09 min from Bortle 6
- Sombrero Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF mini: 47 min from Bortle 6
- Sombrero Galaxy with the DwarfLab Draco: 39 min from Bortle 6
- Sombrero Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF II: 2 h 39 min from Bortle 6
- Sombrero Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera II: 47 min from Bortle 6
- Sombrero Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera Pro: 1 h 45 min from Bortle 6
- Sombrero Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera 3: 45 min from Bortle 6
- Sombrero Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera Pro 2: 1 h 40 min from Bortle 6
- Sombrero Galaxy with the Unistellar eQuinox 2: 42 min from Bortle 6
- Sombrero Galaxy with the Celestron Origin: 12 min from Bortle 6
- Sombrero Galaxy with the Celestron Origin Mark II: 17 min from Bortle 6
All telescopes for the Sombrero Galaxy · All targets for the Odyssey