Colour - have we been doing it wrong?

[RickS]

An interesting and thought provoking article from Roger Clark on the "natural" colour of nebulae and interstellar dust:

http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/color.of.nebulae.and.interstellar.d ust/

Not sure I'm a fan of the colours in his Horsehead/M42 pic but maybe it will grow on me :shrug:

Cheers,
Rick.

[multiweb]

I always liked it green.

[Andy01]

All very interesting and maybe it's just me, but those images are not aestheticcally pleasing to my eye. :shrug:

[RickS]

I have a bunch of SHO images like that, Marc. Perhaps I should stop toning down the green and magenta and learn to like 'em :lol:



I wasn't fussed on them either, Andy, but perhaps that's where respecting the light can take you!

Cheers,
Rick.

[rally]

"You don’t take a photograph, you make it" - Ansel Adams

Its all art - Once its been stretched there is only a small resemblence to the original spectral intensities anyway, so I dont think we can really get too hung up on it.

But its always great to hear the many different arguments about how the Universe should look and why the current views arent correct.

This does however lead the way to "artists" producing super saturated colour schemes like Roger is using - the new flouro astrophotography.
Doubt I'll be a fan but I think we need to see some !!!

[Ryderscope]

Thanks for posting this Rick. I like the challenge of attempting to integrate the artistic side and the scientific side of the work that we do in astro imaging. No right answers of course but the debates can be very informative.

[SteveInNZ]

My simple brain says that if the dominant emission of IC434 is H-a and the blue H-b is much less and reduced by Raleigh scattering, then the colour should be close to the colour I see when I look through an H-a filter. That colour isn't pink.

Steve.

[astronobob]

Some very interesting & intriguing reading there for the likes of yourself & others of similar calibre astro-image processing Rick :thumbsup:
Personally, Im flat out getting the moon to look natural :P ;)