I'm posting this question here because ultimately it involves equipment choices.
I ran into this discussion today and I wonder what others think? It boils down to an argument that astro-cameras unnaturally (compared to our eyes) respond to Ha far too much and this results in overly saturated red images of nebula. We often claim that colour balance in astrophotos is "real" and just boosted so that if our eyes were more sensitive to colour that this is what we would see...similar to the argument that grass doesn't look green at night but if we boost it it will look green.
Personally I think there is validity to this argument. Adding additional Ha in the R channel which happens by virtue of the CCD/CMOS sensitivity does in fact create an unnatural color image if we want to honestly create an image that reflects what our unaided eyes "might" see.
https://clarkvision.com/articles/col...rstellar.dust/
Peter
Edit: Thinking further about this, I wouldn’t want to give up the detail that pops out in Ha. Why not collect red data with a filter that more matches what our eyes might see if they were simply more responsive. That would give a good colour balance. Then blend in Ha to luminance for the detail? I suppose we do that anyway in RGB imaging but perhaps with too much red.