How long to image the Pleiades with the Unistellar eQuinox 2
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Unistellar eQuinox 2 needs about 2 h 28 min (2,219 subs of 4 s) for a solid image of the Pleiades. A quick look takes 37 min; a showpiece 9 h 52 min. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 1 h 25 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is a mix of skyglow and read noise. In this scope's field it is 3.2× wider than the frame.
| Sky | Quick lookTarget obvious, still noisy | SolidClean enough to share | ShowpieceSmooth faint detail, print-worthy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bortle 1Excellent dark site | 20 min295 subs | 1 h 18 min1,177 subs | 5 h 14 min4,707 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 20 min303 subs | 1 h 21 min1,209 subs | 5 h 22 min4,835 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 21 min318 subs | 1 h 25 min1,270 subs | 5 h 38 min5,077 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 24 min354 subs | 1 h 34 min1,416 subs | 6 h 18 min5,664 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 27 min413 subs | 1 h 50 min1,649 subs | 7 h 20 min6,593 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 37 min555 subs | 2 h 28 min2,219 subs | 9 h 52 min8,874 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 55 min827 subs | 3 h 40 min3,305 subs | 15 h13,220 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 1 h 23 min1,248 subs | 5 h 33 min4,992 subs | 22 h19,967 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 2 h 23 min2,148 subs | 9 h 33 min8,590 subs | 38 h34,358 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 3 h 12 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, and 30% off the battery for a November night.)
- 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.
- 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.
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Everything that fits the eQuinox 2 →
How it frames
The Pleiades is 110′ across. The eQuinox 2 frames 0.76° × 0.57° at 1.33″ per pixel, so it is 3.2× 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 Pleiades
The stars take seconds. The blue reflection nebulosity around them is faint and needs hours from any sky, and no filter helps because it is starlight, not emission.
M45, Seven Sisters · Reflection nebula in Taurus · magnitude 1.6 · 110′ · best in Oct, Nov, Dec. Reachable from mid-northern latitudes (UK, northern US, central Europe) and from the south.
Reflection nebulae are starlight scattered by dust, so they are broadband and blue. A dual-band filter removes almost all of it; do not use one. These are among the faintest structures a smart scope can attempt and the figures run long. A dark sky matters more here than for any other type, and the Moon must be down.
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 Pleiades from a eQuinox 2? Email it with your total time and sky to [email protected] and it goes here, credited.
Same target, other telescopes
- Pleiades with the ZWO Seestar S50: 2 h 42 min from Bortle 6
- Pleiades with the ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: 2 h 57 min from Bortle 6
- Pleiades with the ZWO Seestar S30: 2 h 50 min from Bortle 6
- Pleiades with the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro: 3 h 08 min from Bortle 6
- Pleiades with the DwarfLab DWARF 3: 3 h 55 min from Bortle 6
- Pleiades with the DwarfLab DWARF mini: 2 h 41 min from Bortle 6
- Pleiades with the DwarfLab Draco: 2 h 13 min from Bortle 6
- Pleiades with the DwarfLab DWARF II: 9 h 16 min from Bortle 6
- Pleiades with the Vaonis Vespera II: 2 h 42 min from Bortle 6
- Pleiades with the Vaonis Vespera Pro: 6 h 03 min from Bortle 6
- Pleiades with the Vaonis Vespera 3: 2 h 35 min from Bortle 6
- Pleiades with the Vaonis Vespera Pro 2: 5 h 46 min from Bortle 6
- Pleiades with the Unistellar Odyssey: 11 h from Bortle 6
- Pleiades with the Celestron Origin: 43 min from Bortle 6
- Pleiades with the Celestron Origin Mark II: 59 min from Bortle 6
All telescopes for the Pleiades · All targets for the eQuinox 2