Attachment 277546After some trial and error I found the lack of star colour from my original
image of this was due to using high gain narrowband mode on the camera instead of lower gain broadband mode. Also I took longer exposures (300 seconds instead of 120) and there was no moon damaging the colour.
So now the stars have colour. Not as much though as if I used a CCD camera but perhaps its more accurate being mostly pastel colours like David Malin says star colours are.
Also I did a version with a synthetic luminance which is a combination of LRGB and another with HaRGB (both had the same effect).Basically it boosted the background brightness and did not affect the nebula areas except around the Trifid. So a worthwhile experiment.
Which version do you prefer?
https://pbase.com/gregbradley/image/171784413/large regular size file
https://pbase.com/gregbradley/image/171784413/original large sized file
Alternate version with synthetic luminance:
https://pbase.com/gregbradley/image/171784416/large regular sized file
https://pbase.com/gregbradley/image/171784416/original large sized file
I prefer the standard version as the synthetic luminance highlights the stars a bit too much. With nebula images you usually want the stars to recede in order to highlight the nebula.
Greg.