Andromeda was the first serious AP target I attempted last fall (
https://www.astrobin.com/n55hk2/), so I've been excited to get back to it again. I've made a lot of improvements over the past year and its been fun to see the differences. This capture was over three clear nights, so I got the most integration time of anything I've imaged to date. The light pollution is pretty evident, but this has taught me the value of integration time. The integrated image has a lot of flexibility in stretching and color balancing - usually I'm stretching to the limit just to get something useable.
I used the broadband L-Pro filter for two sessions and then switched to a dual-band UHC filter to try to enhance the hydrogen rich regions a bit, which I think worked. I has to saturate the red channel a bit in post-processing, but there is definitely some hydrogen content there. It doesn't show as clearly as what I see in images posted from very dark sites, but I'm really happy with this image overall.
The core is a little bit saturated so I did a lot of post-processing to try to blend it as smoothly as I could. Some short integration frames might help a little it, but I'm happy with this effort for now. I think it's a real improvement over my first Andromeda.
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