by Ann » Wed Sep 11, 2019 6:02 am
Thank you very much for this beautiful picture of the Heart Nebula!
It is no secret that I'm usually not very happy with the OIII-Hα-SII narrowband Hubble palette pictures of nebulas. But I'm well aware that narrowband imagery (which necessitates mapped color finished pictures) are much easier to produce than sharp and highly resolved RGB images, which means that Hubble palette images are well within reach for amateurs with modest equipment. It's no wonder that these narrowband nebula images are popular among amateur astrophotographers, but this means that my expectations are usually not very high when I learn that the next APOD will be a nebula image.
Yes, but look at this APOD of the Heart Nebula! So beautiful!
What kind of an image is it, though? It is not RGB. It could well be a narrowband image after all. If so, though, the photographer has cleverly tweaked the colors so that most of the nebula is dominated by red Hα (and maybe SII), the way it would be in real life. Only where the inoization is really high do we see the blue (or rather cyan) color of, I assume, OIII.
Note how the cyan patches highlight the hottest stars in the Heart Nebula and the massive star formation going on in the
Fishhead Nebula.
As I was fishing around for Hubble palette images to compare with today's APOD, I found one that I really admired,
this one by Terry Hancock. So not even I dislike all narrowband Hubble palette images.
Ann
Thank you very much for this beautiful picture of the Heart Nebula!
It is no secret that I'm usually not very happy with the OIII-Hα-SII narrowband Hubble palette pictures of nebulas. But I'm well aware that narrowband imagery (which necessitates mapped color finished pictures) are much easier to produce than sharp and highly resolved RGB images, which means that Hubble palette images are well within reach for amateurs with modest equipment. It's no wonder that these narrowband nebula images are popular among amateur astrophotographers, but this means that my expectations are usually not very high when I learn that the next APOD will be a nebula image.
Yes, but look at this APOD of the Heart Nebula! So beautiful! :D
What kind of an image is it, though? It is not RGB. It could well be a narrowband image after all. If so, though, the photographer has cleverly tweaked the colors so that most of the nebula is dominated by red Hα (and maybe SII), the way it would be in real life. Only where the inoization is really high do we see the blue (or rather cyan) color of, I assume, OIII.
Note how the cyan patches highlight the hottest stars in the Heart Nebula and the massive star formation going on in the [url=https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1412/ic1795_snyder_960.jpg]Fishhead Nebula[/url].
As I was fishing around for Hubble palette images to compare with today's APOD, I found one that I really admired, [url=https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1303/heart_hancock_960.jpg]this one[/url] by Terry Hancock. So not even I dislike all narrowband Hubble palette images.
Ann