How long to image the M36 with the Vaonis Vespera Pro
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Vaonis Vespera Pro needs about 7 min (43 subs of 10 s) for a solid image of the M36. A quick look takes 2 min; a showpiece 28 min. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 5 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 fills 12% 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 min10 subs | 5 min30 subs | 17 min100 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 2 min10 subs | 5 min30 subs | 17 min102 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 2 min10 subs | 5 min30 subs | 18 min106 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 2 min10 subs | 5 min30 subs | 19 min116 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 2 min10 subs | 5 min33 subs | 22 min131 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 2 min11 subs | 7 min43 subs | 28 min170 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 3 min16 subs | 10 min61 subs | 40 min243 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 4 min23 subs | 15 min90 subs | 59 min357 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 6 min38 subs | 25 min150 subs | 1 h 40 min600 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 9 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, and 30% off the battery for a December night.)
- 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.
- hand warmers long lastingAir-activated packs give hours of heat for the person; winter nights are long and you spend most of them standing still.
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 Vespera Pro →
How it frames
The M36 is 12′ across. The Vespera Pro frames 1.62° × 1.62° at 1.65″ per pixel, so it fills 12% of the frame’s short side.
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 | 5 min30 subs | 5 min33 subs | 10 min61 subs |
| 20 s | 10 min30 subs | 10 min30 subs | 10 min30 subs |
| 30 s | 15 min30 subs | 15 min30 subs | 15 min30 subs |
About the M36
The smallest and brightest of the three Auriga Messier clusters. Compact, blue stars.
NGC 1960 · Open cluster in Auriga · magnitude 6.3 · 12′ · best in Nov, Dec, Jan. 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 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 M36 from a Vespera Pro? Email it with your total time and sky to [email protected] and it goes here, credited.
Same target, other telescopes
- M36 with the ZWO Seestar S50: 5 min from Bortle 6
- M36 with the ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: 5 min from Bortle 6
- M36 with the ZWO Seestar S30: 5 min from Bortle 6
- M36 with the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro: 5 min from Bortle 6
- M36 with the DwarfLab DWARF 3: 8 min from Bortle 6
- M36 with the DwarfLab DWARF mini: 8 min from Bortle 6
- M36 with the DwarfLab Draco: 15 min from Bortle 6
- M36 with the DwarfLab DWARF II: 10 min from Bortle 6
- M36 with the Vaonis Vespera II: 5 min from Bortle 6
- M36 with the Vaonis Vespera 3: 5 min from Bortle 6
- M36 with the Vaonis Vespera Pro 2: 7 min from Bortle 6
- M36 with the Unistellar eQuinox 2: 3 min from Bortle 6
- M36 with the Unistellar Odyssey: 11 min from Bortle 6
- M36 with the Celestron Origin: 5 min from Bortle 6
- M36 with the Celestron Origin Mark II: 5 min from Bortle 6
All telescopes for the M36 · All targets for the Vespera Pro