How long to image the Antennae Galaxies with the Unistellar Odyssey
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Unistellar Odyssey needs about 8 h 16 min (7,443 subs of 4 s) for a solid image of the Antennae Galaxies. A quick look takes 2 h 04 min; a showpiece 33 h. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 5 h 34 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 | 1 h 20 min1,195 subs | 5 h 18 min4,778 subs | 21 h19,109 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 1 h 21 min1,215 subs | 5 h 24 min4,860 subs | 22 h19,437 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 1 h 24 min1,254 subs | 5 h 34 min5,014 subs | 22 h20,056 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 1 h 30 min1,348 subs | 5 h 59 min5,390 subs | 24 h21,557 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 1 h 40 min1,496 subs | 6 h 39 min5,984 subs | 27 h23,936 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 2 h 04 min1,861 subs | 8 h 16 min7,443 subs | 33 h29,772 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 2 h 50 min2,556 subs | 11 h10,224 subs | 45 h40,893 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 4 h 02 min3,635 subs | 16 h14,540 subs | 65 h58,160 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 6 h 36 min5,937 subs | 26 h23,746 subs | 110+ h94,984 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 11 h of run time. That is more than one night: over 2 nights, about 5 h 23 min each. The Odyssey’s battery is rated at about 5 h, so each night needs an external power bank. (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 Antennae Galaxies is 5′ × 3′ across. The Odyssey frames 0.75° × 0.56° at 0.93″ 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 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 Antennae Galaxies from a Odyssey? 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 eQuinox 2: 1 h 48 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 Odyssey