How long to image the Sagittarius Star Cloud with the Unistellar eQuinox 2
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Unistellar eQuinox 2 needs about 8 min (114 subs of 4 s) for a solid image of the Sagittarius Star Cloud. A quick look takes 2 min; a showpiece 30 min. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 5 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is a mix of skyglow and read noise. In this scope's field it is 2.6× wider than the frame.
| Sky | Quick lookTarget obvious, still noisy | SolidClean enough to share | ShowpieceSmooth faint detail, print-worthy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bortle 1Excellent dark site | 1 min17 subs | 5 min68 subs | 18 min272 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 1 min18 subs | 5 min70 subs | 18 min278 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 1 min18 subs | 5 min72 subs | 19 min288 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 1 min20 subs | 5 min79 subs | 21 min314 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 1 min23 subs | 6 min89 subs | 24 min354 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 2 min29 subs | 8 min114 subs | 30 min454 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 3 min41 subs | 11 min161 subs | 43 min644 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 4 min59 subs | 16 min235 subs | 1 h 03 min938 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 7 min98 subs | 26 min392 subs | 1 h 44 min1,566 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 10 min of run time. The eQuinox 2’s battery (rated about 11 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-C power bank 20000mAh 5V 2AUnistellar asks for a 5 V 2 A output; PD is not needed.
- 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 eQuinox 2 →
How it frames
The Sagittarius Star Cloud is 90′ across. The eQuinox 2 frames 0.76° × 0.57° at 1.33″ per pixel, so it is 2.6× wider than the frame. A mosaic, or choosing the part you want and letting the rest go, is how it gets shot on this scope.
About the Sagittarius Star Cloud
A window through the dust into the inner Milky Way, densely packed with stars. Short stacks are enough; it is stars, not nebulosity.
M24, IC 4715 · Star cloud in Sagittarius · magnitude 4.6 · 90′ · best in Jun, Jul, Aug. Reachable from mid-northern latitudes (UK, northern US, central Europe) and from the south.
Star clouds are dense fields of ordinary stars rather than nebulosity. Short subs, no filter, and a modest total keep the field from saturating while still showing the depth of the Milky Way.
About the Unistellar eQuinox 2
A 114 mm Newtonian with five times the light grasp of a 50 mm refractor. Fixed 4 s subs put it in read-noise territory under dark skies, but the aperture carries it. The published field is 45.6′ × 34.2′, a crop of the sensor.
Fixed 4 s subs in Enhanced Vision; they cannot be changed. No built-in filter. Unistellar sells only a solar filter and says a third-party filter is at your own risk and voids the warranty.
The eQuinox 2 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 Sagittarius Star Cloud from a eQuinox 2? Email it with your total time and sky to [email protected] and it goes here, credited.
Same target, other telescopes
- Sagittarius Star Cloud with the ZWO Seestar S50: 9 min from Bortle 6
- Sagittarius Star Cloud with the ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: 10 min from Bortle 6
- Sagittarius Star Cloud with the ZWO Seestar S30: 9 min from Bortle 6
- Sagittarius Star Cloud with the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro: 10 min from Bortle 6
- Sagittarius Star Cloud with the DwarfLab DWARF 3: 13 min from Bortle 6
- Sagittarius Star Cloud with the DwarfLab DWARF mini: 9 min from Bortle 6
- Sagittarius Star Cloud with the DwarfLab Draco: 15 min from Bortle 6
- Sagittarius Star Cloud with the DwarfLab DWARF II: 29 min from Bortle 6
- Sagittarius Star Cloud with the Vaonis Vespera II: 9 min from Bortle 6
- Sagittarius Star Cloud with the Vaonis Vespera Pro: 20 min from Bortle 6
- Sagittarius Star Cloud with the Vaonis Vespera 3: 8 min from Bortle 6
- Sagittarius Star Cloud with the Vaonis Vespera Pro 2: 19 min from Bortle 6
- Sagittarius Star Cloud with the Unistellar Odyssey: 34 min from Bortle 6
- Sagittarius Star Cloud with the Celestron Origin: 5 min from Bortle 6
- Sagittarius Star Cloud with the Celestron Origin Mark II: 5 min from Bortle 6
All telescopes for the Sagittarius Star Cloud · All targets for the eQuinox 2