How long to image the Andromeda Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera Pro
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Vaonis Vespera Pro needs about 3 h 16 min (1,176 subs of 10 s) for a solid image of the Andromeda Galaxy. A quick look takes 49 min; a showpiece 13 h. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 1 h 23 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is skyglow, so a darker site or a filter helps more than longer subs. In this scope's field it is 1.8× wider than the frame.
| Sky | Quick lookTarget obvious, still noisy | SolidClean enough to share | ShowpieceSmooth faint detail, print-worthy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bortle 1Excellent dark site | 18 min109 subs | 1 h 12 min434 subs | 4 h 49 min1,735 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 19 min115 subs | 1 h 16 min457 subs | 5 h 04 min1,826 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 21 min125 subs | 1 h 23 min500 subs | 5 h 33 min1,999 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 25 min151 subs | 1 h 41 min604 subs | 6 h 43 min2,416 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 32 min193 subs | 2 h 08 min770 subs | 8 h 33 min3,078 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 49 min294 subs | 3 h 16 min1,176 subs | 13 h4,702 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 1 h 21 min488 subs | 5 h 25 min1,949 subs | 22 h7,796 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 2 h 11 min788 subs | 8 h 45 min3,150 subs | 35 h12,599 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 3 h 58 min1,428 subs | 16 h5,711 subs | 63 h22,844 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 4 h 15 min of run time. The Vespera Pro’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 PD power bank 20000mAh 30WExtends the 11 h battery; 30 W PD per Vaonis.
- red LED head torchRed light keeps your night vision; white light costs you twenty minutes of dark adaptation every time.
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How it frames
The Andromeda Galaxy is 178′ × 63′ across. The Vespera Pro frames 1.62° × 1.62° at 1.65″ per pixel, so it is 1.8× 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.
Longer subs
10 s subs by default; Expert Mode manual targets allow 1 to 30 s. Alt-azimuth only, no EQ mode. Time for a solid image by sub length:
| Sub length | Bortle 3 | Bortle 5 | Bortle 7 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 s | 1 h 23 min500 subs | 2 h 08 min770 subs | 5 h 25 min1,949 subs |
| 20 s | 1 h 09 min208 subs | 1 h 54 min343 subs | 5 h 11 min932 subs |
| 30 s | 1 h 04 min129 subs | 1 h 49 min219 subs | 5 h 06 min612 subs |
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 Vaonis Vespera Pro
The square-sensor Vespera with 2 µm pixels. Higher resolution than the II, and correspondingly slower per pixel: expect around double the time for the same per-pixel SNR. Run-out in 2026 and replaced by the Vespera Pro 2.
10 s subs by default; Expert Mode manual targets allow 1 to 30 s. Alt-azimuth only, no EQ mode. Optional clip-on Vaonis filters: dual-band, light-pollution (CLS) and solar.
Longer subs matter most under dark skies, where read noise rather than skyglow sets the floor. From a city the difference between 10 s and 30 s subs is small; from a rural site it can halve the total time, especially with a dual-band filter in place.
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 Vespera Pro? 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 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 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 Vespera Pro