How long to image the Black Eye Galaxy with the Unistellar Odyssey
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Unistellar Odyssey needs about 2 h 18 min (2,073 subs of 4 s) for a solid image of the Black Eye Galaxy. A quick look takes 35 min; a showpiece 9 h 13 min. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 1 h 35 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is a mix of skyglow and read noise. In this scope's field it fills 30% 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 | 23 min339 subs | 1 h 30 min1,356 subs | 6 h 01 min5,422 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 23 min345 subs | 1 h 32 min1,378 subs | 6 h 07 min5,510 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 24 min355 subs | 1 h 35 min1,420 subs | 6 h 18 min5,677 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 25 min380 subs | 1 h 41 min1,520 subs | 6 h 45 min6,080 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 28 min420 subs | 1 h 52 min1,680 subs | 7 h 28 min6,720 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 35 min519 subs | 2 h 18 min2,073 subs | 9 h 13 min8,290 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 47 min706 subs | 3 h 08 min2,821 subs | 13 h11,281 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 1 h 06 min996 subs | 4 h 25 min3,982 subs | 18 h15,925 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 1 h 48 min1,615 subs | 7 h 10 min6,457 subs | 29 h25,828 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 3 h of run time. The Odyssey’s battery (rated about 5 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 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.
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Everything that fits the Odyssey →
How it frames
The Black Eye Galaxy is 10′ × 5′ across. The Odyssey frames 0.75° × 0.56° at 0.93″ per pixel, so it fills 30% of the frame’s short side.
About the Black Eye Galaxy
A bright spiral with a dark dust band across the nucleus. The eye shows within an hour on a 50 mm scope.
M64, NGC 4826 · Galaxy in Coma Berenices · magnitude 8.5 · 10′ × 5′ · best in Mar, Apr, May. 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 Black Eye Galaxy from a Odyssey? Email it with your total time and sky to [email protected] and it goes here, credited.
Same target, other telescopes
- Black Eye Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S50: 34 min from Bortle 6
- Black Eye Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: 37 min from Bortle 6
- Black Eye Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S30: 36 min from Bortle 6
- Black Eye Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro: 40 min from Bortle 6
- Black Eye Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF 3: 50 min from Bortle 6
- Black Eye Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF mini: 34 min from Bortle 6
- Black Eye Galaxy with the DwarfLab Draco: 28 min from Bortle 6
- Black Eye Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF II: 1 h 55 min from Bortle 6
- Black Eye Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera II: 34 min from Bortle 6
- Black Eye Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera Pro: 1 h 16 min from Bortle 6
- Black Eye Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera 3: 33 min from Bortle 6
- Black Eye Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera Pro 2: 1 h 13 min from Bortle 6
- Black Eye Galaxy with the Unistellar eQuinox 2: 30 min from Bortle 6
- Black Eye Galaxy with the Celestron Origin: 9 min from Bortle 6
- Black Eye Galaxy with the Celestron Origin Mark II: 13 min from Bortle 6
All telescopes for the Black Eye Galaxy · All targets for the Odyssey