How long to image the Eastern Veil Nebula with the Unistellar eQuinox 2
From a Bortle 6 suburban sky, the Unistellar eQuinox 2 needs about 1 h 53 min (1,695 subs of 4 s) for a solid image of the Eastern Veil Nebula. A quick look takes 28 min; a showpiece 7 h 32 min. Under a Bortle 3 rural sky the solid figure drops to 1 h 05 min. At Bortle 6 the limit is a mix of skyglow and read noise. In this scope's field it is 1.8× wider than the frame.
| Sky | Quick lookTarget obvious, still noisy | SolidClean enough to share | ShowpieceSmooth faint detail, print-worthy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bortle 1Excellent dark site | 15 min226 subs | 1 h904 subs | 4 h 01 min3,616 subs |
| Bortle 2Typical dark site | 15 min233 subs | 1 h 02 min929 subs | 4 h 07 min3,713 subs |
| Bortle 3Rural | 16 min244 subs | 1 h 05 min974 subs | 4 h 20 min3,896 subs |
| Bortle 4Rural / suburban transition | 18 min272 subs | 1 h 12 min1,086 subs | 4 h 49 min4,341 subs |
| Bortle 5Suburban | 21 min316 subs | 1 h 24 min1,262 subs | 5 h 36 min5,046 subs |
| Bortle 6Bright suburban | 28 min424 subs | 1 h 53 min1,695 subs | 7 h 32 min6,777 subs |
| Bortle 7Suburban / urban transition | 42 min630 subs | 2 h 48 min2,519 subs | 11 h10,073 subs |
| Bortle 8City | 1 h 03 min950 subs | 4 h 13 min3,798 subs | 17 h15,192 subs |
| Bortle 9Inner city | 1 h 49 min1,632 subs | 7 h 15 min6,527 subs | 29 h26,108 subs |
Power and kit for this session
Allowing for slewing, focusing and rejected subs, that is about 2 h 27 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 Eastern Veil Nebula is 60′ × 8′ across. The eQuinox 2 frames 0.76° × 0.57° at 1.33″ per pixel, so it is 1.8× wider than the frame. A mosaic, or choosing the part you want and letting the rest go, is how it gets shot on this scope.
Filters
The Eastern Veil Nebula is an emission target, where a dual-band filter would normally cut the time several-fold from a lit sky, but the eQuinox 2 has no dual-band option: 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 figures above are for the No filter position, and a darker sky is the lever that remains.
About the Eastern Veil Nebula
The brighter, more detailed arc of the Veil. Red hydrogen and teal oxygen filaments interleave; dual-band captures both.
NGC 6992, NGC 6995, Caldwell 33 · Supernova remnant in Cygnus · magnitude 7.0 · 60′ × 8′ · best in Jul, Aug, Sep. Reachable from mid-northern latitudes (UK, northern US, central Europe) and from the south.
Supernova remnants are emission-line objects, strong in both hydrogen-alpha and OIII, and their filaments are thin, so pixel scale matters as much as aperture. A dual-band filter is essential from any lit sky and still helps under a dark one. These are long-integration targets; plan on several sessions and stack across nights.
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 Eastern Veil Nebula from a eQuinox 2? Email it with your total time and sky to [email protected] and it goes here, credited.
Same target, other telescopes
- Eastern Veil Nebula with the ZWO Seestar S50: 1 h 18 min from Bortle 6
- Eastern Veil Nebula with the ZWO Seestar S50 Pro: 1 h 28 min from Bortle 6
- Eastern Veil Nebula with the ZWO Seestar S30: 1 h 31 min from Bortle 6
- Eastern Veil Nebula with the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro: 1 h 35 min from Bortle 6
- Eastern Veil Nebula with the DwarfLab DWARF 3: 1 h 37 min from Bortle 6
- Eastern Veil Nebula with the DwarfLab DWARF mini: 1 h 17 min from Bortle 6
- Eastern Veil Nebula with the DwarfLab Draco: 1 h 02 min from Bortle 6
- Eastern Veil Nebula with the DwarfLab DWARF II: 7 h 05 min from Bortle 6
- Eastern Veil Nebula with the Vaonis Vespera II: 2 h 04 min from Bortle 6
- Eastern Veil Nebula with the Vaonis Vespera Pro: 4 h 38 min from Bortle 6
- Eastern Veil Nebula with the Vaonis Vespera 3: 1 h 58 min from Bortle 6
- Eastern Veil Nebula with the Vaonis Vespera Pro 2: 4 h 25 min from Bortle 6
- Eastern Veil Nebula with the Unistellar Odyssey: 8 h 43 min from Bortle 6
- Eastern Veil Nebula with the Celestron Origin: 33 min from Bortle 6
- Eastern Veil Nebula with the Celestron Origin Mark II: 45 min from Bortle 6
All telescopes for the Eastern Veil Nebula · All targets for the eQuinox 2