Chatted with an old guy at a star party in Tucson who changed how I see nebula photos

He said most of those colorful deep space shots are false color maps, not what you'd actually see. Apparently the Hubble palette assigns different gases to specific colors to highlight structure, not reality. Anyone know a good tutorial for learning how to process my own images with that technique?

2 comments

2 Comments

avery_lopez2d ago

Finally messed with the Hubble palette myself last week and turned my M16 pillar shot into what looked like a tie-dye shirt from a 90s rave. Totally my fault for clicking the wrong color mapping preset though. Siril has a pretty good tutorial for this, just search "SHO palette workflow" on YouTube and skip the first ten minutes of ads. The key is remembering hydrogen alpha gets the green channel which looks awful until you combine it with sulfur and oxygen.

brown.gavin2d ago

Tie-dye shirt from a 90s rave" sounds accurate. People treat color mapping like it's art school, not science.