How long to image the Andromeda Galaxy with the Unistellar eQuinox 2
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Unistellar eQuinox 2 needs about 1 h 19 min (1,191 subs of 4 s) for a solid image of the Andromeda Galaxy. A quick look takes 20 min; a showpiece 5 h 17 min. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 46 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is a mix of skyglow and read noise. In this scope's field it is 5.2× wider than the frame.
| Sky | Quick lookTarget obvious, still noisy | SolidClean enough to share | ShowpieceSmooth faint detail, print-worthy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bortle 1Excellent dark site | 11 min161 subs | 43 min641 subs | 2 h 51 min2,563 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 11 min165 subs | 44 min658 subs | 2 h 55 min2,630 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 11 min173 subs | 46 min690 subs | 3 h 04 min2,758 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 13 min192 subs | 51 min767 subs | 3 h 24 min3,068 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 15 min223 subs | 59 min890 subs | 3 h 57 min3,558 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 20 min298 subs | 1 h 19 min1,191 subs | 5 h 17 min4,761 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 29 min441 subs | 1 h 58 min1,764 subs | 7 h 50 min7,054 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 44 min664 subs | 2 h 57 min2,654 subs | 12 h10,614 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 1 h 16 min1,138 subs | 5 h 03 min4,552 subs | 20 h18,207 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 1 h 43 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 Andromeda Galaxy is 178′ × 63′ across. The eQuinox 2 frames 0.76° × 0.57° at 1.33″ per pixel, so it is 5.2× 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 Andromeda Galaxy
The nearest big spiral and the most imaged galaxy in the sky. The core arrives in minutes, the dust lanes in an hour, the faint outer disc needs a whole night. Too big for most smart-scope fields without mosaic.
M31, NGC 224 · Galaxy in Andromeda · magnitude 3.4 · 178′ × 63′ · best in Sep, Oct, Nov. 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 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 Andromeda Galaxy from a eQuinox 2? Email it with your total time and sky to [email protected] and it goes here, credited.
Same target, other telescopes
- Andromeda Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S50: 1 h 27 min from Bortle 6
- Andromeda Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: 1 h 36 min from Bortle 6
- Andromeda Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S30: 1 h 32 min from Bortle 6
- Andromeda Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro: 1 h 41 min from Bortle 6
- Andromeda Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF 3: 2 h 07 min from Bortle 6
- Andromeda Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF mini: 1 h 27 min from Bortle 6
- Andromeda Galaxy with the DwarfLab Draco: 1 h 12 min from Bortle 6
- Andromeda Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF II: 4 h 59 min from Bortle 6
- Andromeda Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera II: 1 h 27 min from Bortle 6
- Andromeda Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera Pro: 3 h 16 min from Bortle 6
- Andromeda Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera 3: 1 h 24 min from Bortle 6
- Andromeda Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera Pro 2: 3 h 07 min from Bortle 6
- Andromeda Galaxy with the Unistellar Odyssey: 6 h 07 min from Bortle 6
- Andromeda Galaxy with the Celestron Origin: 23 min from Bortle 6
- Andromeda Galaxy with the Celestron Origin Mark II: 32 min from Bortle 6
All telescopes for the Andromeda Galaxy · All targets for the eQuinox 2