Imaging DSOs in moderate LP

[Klesk14]

A moderate amount of LP around the area I'm at and was curious.

If I were to image a DSO, lets say... Andromeda Galaxy for example. When looking into the eye piece I see a faint smudge that you can sort of make out however cannot see any detail.

Now if I were to image what I see and stack multiple exposures. Will I see a very bright smudge, or will I actually see the image of the galaxy with some to a lot of detail?

[brantuk]

Andromeda appears visually as a smudge in all scopes - you'll get a little bit of detail appearing on large dobs of 16" diameter and above but smaller scopes you'll only see a smudge. You need to image it to get detail and the darker your location the better.

[RikM]

Just taking a few exposures and stacking them is only half of the fun. It's the post processing, where you play with the saturation and contrast etc. that brings out the details in the image.

[Klesk14]

Looks like it'll involve more play time