Solar System Scale - 21-04-2012

Michael

You might have to expand (elucidate) on that question - I for one, am not sure what it is that you are asking.

Mark C.

H-alpha light is at wavelength of 6563nm.
This is in the red part of the spectrum.
www.astronomyknowhow.com/pics-res/hydrogen-spectra.jpg

I use a monochrome camera to record h-alpha detail.
When I process the image, I add colour to the image.
What I'm wondering is whether there is an exact colour I can add to the image to match the exact colour of the Sun at 6563nm.

only thing is, would it look better?!?, h-alpha is almost a blood red, where as you have a nice sunset orange colour in there, it would be interesting to compare.

Dave_Lillis wrote: only thing is, would it look better?!?, h-alpha is almost a blood red, where as you have a nice sunset orange colour in there, it would be interesting to compare.

Good point. I don't think it would look any better.
I'm just curious about the science of light & colour and how to represent that on an 8 bit monitor - if that is possible.

I did a bit of a trawl and the best info that I found is

www.midnightkite.com/color.html

There's a link to a FORTRAN source to convert wavelength to RGB.
(gcc compiles FORTRAN).

But that's probably a lot of trouble.

This may be a stupid suggestion (and its cheating avoiding all science and engineering) - but could you examine the RGB of the Sun's H-alpha flares from an existing true-colour solar-eclipse picture?
[or from the spectral lines in above link]

You would have to be sure colour wasn't manipulated though.

Mark C.