During the long stretch of cloudy, rainy weather Colorado had this spring (really stretching from mid March through late the end of May), I decided to reintegrate all of my decent older data from targets I'd imaged last fall. One of those was Andromeda Galaxy, an unfiltered, relatively short exposure image acquired from my red zone back yard.

The original, integrated from 75 subs in DSS, can be seen here: http://www.astrobin.com/130508/F/

The new version includes more data than the original, a total of 174 subs, integrated manually with PI. Much more advanced noise reduction and detail enhancement techniques were used with this new integration than in my original attempt. Enough faint color data was able to be extracted that, despite the use of an unmodded Canon 5D III for imaging, bits of HII nebula regions in the arms of Andromeda can faintly be seen scattered about blue giants in the arms.

One of the primary goals with this image was to process it to more realistic color, as defined by stellar classifications for stars of varying age, mass and distribution within galaxies. The core is much yellower in this version than the original, which had a stark white core. The arms are more white to blue, however without the strong and unrealistic heavy blue of the original. Blue giants show up a pale blue, which I feel is more realistic and representative of what these stars are probably actually like, and outer arms in general are more white mixed with Ha nebula than blue.

Version C/D: Reduced starfield, was a bit overpowering before