How long to image the Cigar Galaxy with the Unistellar eQuinox 2
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Unistellar eQuinox 2 needs about 31 min (459 subs of 4 s) for a solid image of the Cigar Galaxy. A quick look takes 8 min; a showpiece 2 h 02 min. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 18 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is a mix of skyglow and read noise. In this scope's field it fills 32% 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 | 4 min65 subs | 17 min259 subs | 1 h 09 min1,034 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 4 min67 subs | 18 min265 subs | 1 h 11 min1,059 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 5 min70 subs | 18 min277 subs | 1 h 14 min1,105 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 5 min77 subs | 20 min305 subs | 1 h 21 min1,218 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 6 min88 subs | 23 min350 subs | 1 h 33 min1,397 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 8 min115 subs | 31 min459 subs | 2 h 02 min1,836 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 11 min168 subs | 45 min669 subs | 2 h 58 min2,673 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 17 min249 subs | 1 h 06 min993 subs | 4 h 25 min3,971 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 28 min422 subs | 1 h 52 min1,686 subs | 7 h 29 min6,741 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 40 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 February 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 Cigar Galaxy is 11′ × 4′ across. The eQuinox 2 frames 0.76° × 0.57° at 1.33″ per pixel, so it fills 32% of the frame’s short side.
About the Cigar Galaxy
An edge-on starburst galaxy with red hydrogen jets bursting from its core. Dual-band pulls the jets out of the glare.
M82, NGC 3034 · Galaxy in Ursa Major · magnitude 8.4 · 11′ × 4′ · best in Jan, Feb, Mar. 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 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 Cigar Galaxy from a eQuinox 2? Email it with your total time and sky to [email protected] and it goes here, credited.
Same target, other telescopes
- Cigar Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S50: 35 min from Bortle 6
- Cigar Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: 38 min from Bortle 6
- Cigar Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S30: 36 min from Bortle 6
- Cigar Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro: 40 min from Bortle 6
- Cigar Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF 3: 50 min from Bortle 6
- Cigar Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF mini: 34 min from Bortle 6
- Cigar Galaxy with the DwarfLab Draco: 28 min from Bortle 6
- Cigar Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF II: 1 h 57 min from Bortle 6
- Cigar Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera II: 35 min from Bortle 6
- Cigar Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera Pro: 1 h 17 min from Bortle 6
- Cigar Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera 3: 33 min from Bortle 6
- Cigar Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera Pro 2: 1 h 13 min from Bortle 6
- Cigar Galaxy with the Unistellar Odyssey: 2 h 20 min from Bortle 6
- Cigar Galaxy with the Celestron Origin: 9 min from Bortle 6
- Cigar Galaxy with the Celestron Origin Mark II: 13 min from Bortle 6
All telescopes for the Cigar Galaxy · All targets for the eQuinox 2