How long to image the Wild Duck Cluster with the Unistellar Odyssey
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Unistellar Odyssey needs about 10 min (146 subs of 4 s) for a solid image of the Wild Duck Cluster. A quick look takes 2 min; a showpiece 39 min. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 7 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is a mix of skyglow and read noise. In this scope's field it fills 42% 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 | 2 min27 subs | 7 min105 subs | 28 min419 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 2 min27 subs | 7 min106 subs | 28 min424 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 2 min28 subs | 7 min109 subs | 29 min434 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 2 min29 subs | 8 min115 subs | 30 min457 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 2 min31 subs | 8 min124 subs | 33 min493 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 2 min37 subs | 10 min146 subs | 39 min582 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 3 min47 subs | 13 min188 subs | 50 min751 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 4 min64 subs | 17 min254 subs | 1 h 08 min1,014 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 7 min99 subs | 26 min394 subs | 1 h 45 min1,575 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 13 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 Wild Duck Cluster is 14′ across. The Odyssey frames 0.75° × 0.56° at 0.93″ per pixel, so it fills 42% of the frame’s short side.
About the Wild Duck Cluster
The richest open cluster in the sky, dense enough to pass for a loose globular. Rewards short subs to keep star colour.
M11, NGC 6705 · Open cluster in Scutum · magnitude 5.8 · 14′ · best in Jun, Jul, Aug. Reachable from mid-northern latitudes (UK, northern US, central Europe) and from the south.
Open clusters are the easiest targets in the sky. The stars are bright, so the aim is colour and tight stars rather than depth: short subs, no filter, and stop before the bright members saturate. The nominal time here gets you clean star colour; more integration only adds background stars.
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 Wild Duck Cluster from a Odyssey? Email it with your total time and sky to [email protected] and it goes here, credited.
Same target, other telescopes
- Wild Duck Cluster with the ZWO Seestar S50: 5 min from Bortle 6
- Wild Duck Cluster with the ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: 5 min from Bortle 6
- Wild Duck Cluster with the ZWO Seestar S30: 5 min from Bortle 6
- Wild Duck Cluster with the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro: 5 min from Bortle 6
- Wild Duck Cluster with the DwarfLab DWARF 3: 8 min from Bortle 6
- Wild Duck Cluster with the DwarfLab DWARF mini: 8 min from Bortle 6
- Wild Duck Cluster with the DwarfLab Draco: 15 min from Bortle 6
- Wild Duck Cluster with the DwarfLab DWARF II: 9 min from Bortle 6
- Wild Duck Cluster with the Vaonis Vespera II: 5 min from Bortle 6
- Wild Duck Cluster with the Vaonis Vespera Pro: 6 min from Bortle 6
- Wild Duck Cluster with the Vaonis Vespera 3: 5 min from Bortle 6
- Wild Duck Cluster with the Vaonis Vespera Pro 2: 6 min from Bortle 6
- Wild Duck Cluster with the Unistellar eQuinox 2: 2 min from Bortle 6
- Wild Duck Cluster with the Celestron Origin: 5 min from Bortle 6
- Wild Duck Cluster with the Celestron Origin Mark II: 5 min from Bortle 6
All telescopes for the Wild Duck Cluster · All targets for the Odyssey