How long to image the Andromeda Galaxy with the Unistellar Odyssey
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Unistellar Odyssey needs about 6 h 07 min (5,505 subs of 4 s) for a solid image of the Andromeda Galaxy. A quick look takes 1 h 32 min; a showpiece 24 h. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 4 h 05 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is a mix of skyglow and read noise. In this scope's field it is 5.3× wider than the frame.
| Sky | Quick lookTarget obvious, still noisy | SolidClean enough to share | ShowpieceSmooth faint detail, print-worthy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bortle 1Excellent dark site | 58 min877 subs | 3 h 54 min3,505 subs | 16 h14,020 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 59 min892 subs | 3 h 58 min3,567 subs | 16 h14,265 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 1 h 01 min921 subs | 4 h 05 min3,683 subs | 16 h14,730 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 1 h 06 min991 subs | 4 h 24 min3,964 subs | 18 h15,856 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 1 h 13 min1,103 subs | 4 h 54 min4,410 subs | 20 h17,640 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 1 h 32 min1,377 subs | 6 h 07 min5,505 subs | 24 h22,019 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 2 h 07 min1,898 subs | 8 h 26 min7,591 subs | 34 h30,361 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 3 h2,708 subs | 12 h10,829 subs | 48 h43,314 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 4 h 56 min4,434 subs | 20 h17,735 subs | 79 h70,938 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 7 h 57 min of run time. That is more than one night: over 2 nights, about 3 h 59 min each. The Odyssey’s battery (rated about 5 h) should cover each night; 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.
Affiliate links: the retailer pays us a small commission and you pay the same price. These are search links to the named product, not endorsements of a particular listing; check the listing matches your model.
Everything that fits the Odyssey →
How it frames
The Andromeda Galaxy is 178′ × 63′ across. The Odyssey frames 0.75° × 0.56° at 0.93″ per pixel, so it is 5.3× 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 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 Andromeda Galaxy from a Odyssey? 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 eQuinox 2: 1 h 19 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 Odyssey