How long to image the Cigar Galaxy with the Unistellar Odyssey
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Unistellar Odyssey needs about 2 h 20 min (2,098 subs of 4 s) for a solid image of the Cigar Galaxy. A quick look takes 35 min; a showpiece 9 h 19 min. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 1 h 36 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is a mix of skyglow and read noise. In this scope's field it fills 33% 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 min343 subs | 1 h 31 min1,369 subs | 6 h 05 min5,474 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 23 min348 subs | 1 h 33 min1,391 subs | 6 h 11 min5,564 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 24 min359 subs | 1 h 36 min1,434 subs | 6 h 22 min5,733 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 26 min384 subs | 1 h 42 min1,536 subs | 6 h 50 min6,144 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 28 min425 subs | 1 h 53 min1,699 subs | 7 h 33 min6,795 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 35 min525 subs | 2 h 20 min2,098 subs | 9 h 19 min8,392 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 48 min715 subs | 3 h 11 min2,859 subs | 13 h11,436 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 1 h 07 min1,011 subs | 4 h 29 min4,041 subs | 18 h16,161 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 1 h 49 min1,640 subs | 7 h 17 min6,560 subs | 29 h26,239 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 3 h 02 min of run time. The Odyssey’s battery is rated at about 5 h, less near freezing, which is cutting it fine; take a power bank. (Bortle 6, solid image; we allow 30% over the integration time, and 30% off the battery for a February night.)
- 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.
- 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 Odyssey →
How it frames
The Cigar Galaxy is 11′ × 4′ across. The Odyssey frames 0.75° × 0.56° at 0.93″ per pixel, so it fills 33% 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 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 Cigar Galaxy from a Odyssey? 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 eQuinox 2: 31 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 Odyssey