How long to image the Needle Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera Pro
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Vaonis Vespera Pro needs about 2 h 27 min (885 subs of 10 s) for a solid image of the Needle Galaxy. A quick look takes 37 min; a showpiece 9 h 50 min. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 1 h 04 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is skyglow, so a darker site or a filter helps more than longer subs. In this scope's field it fills 16% 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 | 14 min84 subs | 56 min334 subs | 3 h 42 min1,335 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 15 min88 subs | 58 min351 subs | 3 h 54 min1,403 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 16 min96 subs | 1 h 04 min383 subs | 4 h 15 min1,531 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 19 min116 subs | 1 h 17 min461 subs | 5 h 07 min1,841 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 24 min146 subs | 1 h 37 min584 subs | 6 h 29 min2,333 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 37 min222 subs | 2 h 27 min885 subs | 9 h 50 min3,538 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 1 h 01 min365 subs | 4 h 03 min1,459 subs | 16 h5,836 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 1 h 38 min588 subs | 6 h 32 min2,351 subs | 26 h9,404 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 2 h 57 min1,064 subs | 12 h4,253 subs | 47 h17,012 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 3 h 12 min of run time. The Vespera Pro’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 PD power bank 20000mAh 30WExtends the 11 h battery; 30 W PD per Vaonis.
- red LED head torchRed light keeps your night vision; white light costs you twenty minutes of dark adaptation every time.
Affiliate links: the retailer pays us a small commission and you pay the same price. These are search links to the named product, not endorsements of a particular listing; check the listing matches your model.
Everything that fits the Vespera Pro →
How it frames
The Needle Galaxy is 16′ × 2′ across. The Vespera Pro frames 1.62° × 1.62° at 1.65″ per pixel, so it fills 16% of the frame’s short side.
Longer subs
10 s subs by default; Expert Mode manual targets allow 1 to 30 s. Alt-azimuth only, no EQ mode. Time for a solid image by sub length:
| Sub length | Bortle 3 | Bortle 5 | Bortle 7 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 s | 1 h 04 min383 subs | 1 h 37 min584 subs | 4 h 03 min1,459 subs |
| 20 s | 53 min160 subs | 1 h 27 min260 subs | 3 h 53 min698 subs |
| 30 s | 50 min100 subs | 1 h 23 min167 subs | 3 h 49 min459 subs |
About the Needle Galaxy
The finest edge-on spiral in the northern sky, a thin needle with a central bulge and dust lane.
NGC 4565, Caldwell 38 · Galaxy in Coma Berenices · magnitude 9.6 · 16′ × 2′ · 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 Vaonis Vespera Pro
The square-sensor Vespera with 2 µm pixels. Higher resolution than the II, and correspondingly slower per pixel: expect around double the time for the same per-pixel SNR. Run-out in 2026 and replaced by the Vespera Pro 2.
10 s subs by default; Expert Mode manual targets allow 1 to 30 s. Alt-azimuth only, no EQ mode. Optional clip-on Vaonis filters: dual-band, light-pollution (CLS) and solar.
Longer subs matter most under dark skies, where read noise rather than skyglow sets the floor. From a city the difference between 10 s and 30 s subs is small; from a rural site it can halve the total time, especially with a dual-band filter in place.
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 Needle Galaxy from a Vespera Pro? Email it with your total time and sky to [email protected] and it goes here, credited.
Same target, other telescopes
- Needle Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S50: 1 h 06 min from Bortle 6
- Needle Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: 1 h 12 min from Bortle 6
- Needle Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S30: 1 h 09 min from Bortle 6
- Needle Galaxy with the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro: 1 h 16 min from Bortle 6
- Needle Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF 3: 1 h 36 min from Bortle 6
- Needle Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF mini: 1 h 06 min from Bortle 6
- Needle Galaxy with the DwarfLab Draco: 54 min from Bortle 6
- Needle Galaxy with the DwarfLab DWARF II: 3 h 45 min from Bortle 6
- Needle Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera II: 1 h 06 min from Bortle 6
- Needle Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera 3: 1 h 03 min from Bortle 6
- Needle Galaxy with the Vaonis Vespera Pro 2: 2 h 21 min from Bortle 6
- Needle Galaxy with the Unistellar eQuinox 2: 1 h from Bortle 6
- Needle Galaxy with the Unistellar Odyssey: 4 h 35 min from Bortle 6
- Needle Galaxy with the Celestron Origin: 17 min from Bortle 6
- Needle Galaxy with the Celestron Origin Mark II: 24 min from Bortle 6
All telescopes for the Needle Galaxy · All targets for the Vespera Pro