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The display of colour in astronomical photos is always going to be false because we use our eyes to detect the different frequencies of the emmissions. Colour, like light and dark is how our brains interpret the signals from the receiving aerials in the eye. Who's to say that what I perceive is the same as what others see.
The more sensitive detectors accumulate the luminance of the object which is all we see till the intensity of the accumulated light allows sufficient data to fall on the specific frequency detectors that can pass the color information to the brain.
We ascribe colours to our astronomical photos to the spectrum colour of the material that is emitting or reflecting the light according to how photo sensitive receptors measure it according to the radiated frequencies and then display it usually with a computer grahics program set up to what the eye likes to see.
The most blatent of falsely displayed colours is now done with what we refer to as narrow band photography where our cameras detect the hydrogen alpha components in the sub red area of the spectrum and then display it as a false colour or accentuated luminance. I must admit though that the result is usually very pleasing to the eye and this is really what we like.
So who really cares about the colour. The scientific measurements of colour emissions are used for a multitude of purposes but what we like to see is purely up to our own preferences and usually does not have any relationship to actual colours.
I know I prefer the colours in astro photos to have less colour saturation than is commonly shown. But that is only my preference.
Barry
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