How long to image the Antennae Galaxies with the Unistellar eQuinox 2
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Unistellar eQuinox 2 needs about 1 h 48 min (1,616 subs of 4 s) for a solid image of the Antennae Galaxies. A quick look takes 27 min; a showpiece 7 h 11 min. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 1 h 03 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is a mix of skyglow and read noise. In this scope's field it fills 15% 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 | 15 min221 subs | 59 min883 subs | 3 h 55 min3,532 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 15 min227 subs | 1 h906 subs | 4 h 01 min3,622 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 16 min237 subs | 1 h 03 min948 subs | 4 h 13 min3,792 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 18 min263 subs | 1 h 10 min1,052 subs | 4 h 40 min4,205 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 20 min304 subs | 1 h 21 min1,215 subs | 5 h 24 min4,859 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 27 min404 subs | 1 h 48 min1,616 subs | 7 h 11 min6,463 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 40 min595 subs | 2 h 39 min2,380 subs | 11 h9,519 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 59 min892 subs | 3 h 58 min3,567 subs | 16 h14,265 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 1 h 42 min1,525 subs | 6 h 46 min6,097 subs | 27 h24,386 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 2 h 20 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.)
- 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.
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Everything that fits the eQuinox 2 →
How it frames
The Antennae Galaxies is 5′ × 3′ across. The eQuinox 2 frames 0.76° × 0.57° at 1.33″ per pixel, so it fills 15% of the frame’s short side.
About the Antennae Galaxies
Two colliding galaxies with long tidal tails. The cores are reachable; the antennae themselves are a dark-sky, long-integration task.
NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, Caldwell 60/61 · Galaxy in Corvus · magnitude 10.3 · 5′ × 3′ · 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 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 Antennae Galaxies from a eQuinox 2? Email it with your total time and sky to [email protected] and it goes here, credited.
Same target, other telescopes
- Antennae Galaxies with the ZWO Seestar S50: 2 h from Bortle 6
- Antennae Galaxies with the ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: 2 h 11 min from Bortle 6
- Antennae Galaxies with the ZWO Seestar S30: 2 h 06 min from Bortle 6
- Antennae Galaxies with the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro: 2 h 19 min from Bortle 6
- Antennae Galaxies with the DwarfLab DWARF 3: 2 h 54 min from Bortle 6
- Antennae Galaxies with the DwarfLab DWARF mini: 1 h 59 min from Bortle 6
- Antennae Galaxies with the DwarfLab Draco: 1 h 38 min from Bortle 6
- Antennae Galaxies with the DwarfLab DWARF II: 6 h 48 min from Bortle 6
- Antennae Galaxies with the Vaonis Vespera II: 2 h from Bortle 6
- Antennae Galaxies with the Vaonis Vespera Pro: 4 h 28 min from Bortle 6
- Antennae Galaxies with the Vaonis Vespera 3: 1 h 54 min from Bortle 6
- Antennae Galaxies with the Vaonis Vespera Pro 2: 4 h 15 min from Bortle 6
- Antennae Galaxies with the Unistellar Odyssey: 8 h 16 min from Bortle 6
- Antennae Galaxies with the Celestron Origin: 32 min from Bortle 6
- Antennae Galaxies with the Celestron Origin Mark II: 44 min from Bortle 6
All telescopes for the Antennae Galaxies · All targets for the eQuinox 2