How long to image the Owl Cluster with the Unistellar Odyssey
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Unistellar Odyssey needs about 10 min (157 subs of 4 s) for a solid image of the Owl Cluster. A quick look takes 3 min; a showpiece 42 min. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 8 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is a mix of skyglow and read noise. In this scope's field it fills 39% 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 | 2 min29 subs | 8 min113 subs | 30 min452 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 2 min29 subs | 8 min115 subs | 30 min457 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 2 min30 subs | 8 min117 subs | 31 min467 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 2 min31 subs | 8 min123 subs | 33 min492 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 2 min34 subs | 9 min133 subs | 35 min531 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 3 min40 subs | 10 min157 subs | 42 min627 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 3 min51 subs | 13 min203 subs | 54 min809 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 5 min69 subs | 18 min273 subs | 1 h 13 min1,092 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 7 min106 subs | 28 min424 subs | 1 h 53 min1,696 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 14 min of run time. The Odyssey’s battery (rated about 5 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 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 Owl Cluster is 13′ across. The Odyssey frames 0.75° × 0.56° at 0.93″ per pixel, so it fills 39% of the frame’s short side.
About the Owl Cluster
Two bright stars for eyes and outstretched arms of fainter ones. A crowd-pleaser that needs only minutes.
NGC 457, Caldwell 13, ET Cluster · Open cluster in Cassiopeia · magnitude 6.4 · 13′ · best in Sep, Oct, Nov. Reachable from mid-northern latitudes (UK, northern US, central Europe) and from the south.
Open clusters are the easiest targets in the sky. The stars are bright, so the aim is colour and tight stars rather than depth: short subs, no filter, and stop before the bright members saturate. The nominal time here gets you clean star colour; more integration only adds background stars.
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 Owl Cluster from a Odyssey? Email it with your total time and sky to [email protected] and it goes here, credited.
Same target, other telescopes
- Owl Cluster with the ZWO Seestar S50: 5 min from Bortle 6
- Owl Cluster with the ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: 5 min from Bortle 6
- Owl Cluster with the ZWO Seestar S30: 5 min from Bortle 6
- Owl Cluster with the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro: 5 min from Bortle 6
- Owl Cluster with the DwarfLab DWARF 3: 8 min from Bortle 6
- Owl Cluster with the DwarfLab DWARF mini: 8 min from Bortle 6
- Owl Cluster with the DwarfLab Draco: 15 min from Bortle 6
- Owl Cluster with the DwarfLab DWARF II: 9 min from Bortle 6
- Owl Cluster with the Vaonis Vespera II: 5 min from Bortle 6
- Owl Cluster with the Vaonis Vespera Pro: 7 min from Bortle 6
- Owl Cluster with the Vaonis Vespera 3: 5 min from Bortle 6
- Owl Cluster with the Vaonis Vespera Pro 2: 6 min from Bortle 6
- Owl Cluster with the Unistellar eQuinox 2: 2 min from Bortle 6
- Owl Cluster with the Celestron Origin: 5 min from Bortle 6
- Owl Cluster with the Celestron Origin Mark II: 5 min from Bortle 6
All telescopes for the Owl Cluster · All targets for the Odyssey