NGC 281 Hubble Palette?

Hi Kieran,

The nebula has some great detail, the wisps and dark nebula show up very well, the star points are also good, but why are they all purple?, does this go hand in hand with the filters you used for imaging

Initially Dave I was going to say it was a result of the filter combo but I decided to have a little bit of a play in PS to see if the channel mixer tool could sort out the stars. Normally with RGB images I would do a white balance on a star to get true colour but if you do that on this image the nebula is completely green.

Anyway the results of the PS tweak is below. Thanks for pointing that out Dave and making me get off my a** to work at it more. At least I now know how the channel mixer tool works in PS.

NGC 281 Improved Star Colour

I say improved because its not a true colour image

Hi Kieran,
To me that looks better, I'm trying to recall some software that was mentioned on the boards way way back that removed coloured halos from star images, I for the life of me cant think of it, I think it would work well on your image to reduce the glow around some of the brighter stars.
Can anyone out there remember what the program was ???

The software may be Noel Carbonis Photoshop actions which I have but does not work on halos that big. A 6nm HA filter would work better than the 13nm I have.

Posted the image on progressiveastroimaging.com and got responses that it was too green. Bit of a learning curve this narrow band lark but all input helps though TBH its usually the negative input that helps more. Anyway still working on it but the latest version is tagged with irishastronomy in the image banner at the bottom of the home page rather than keep sticking up new ones on the thread.

I suppose it depends on what you think negative feedback is, I'm only pointing out things you might not have noticed yourself and might be able to change if you think its worth it.
I know from processing planetary images that sometimes fresh eyes pick up stuff as you end up staring at an image too long and end up missing things.
for me, negative feedback would be something along the lines of
"its a crap image, you're wasting your time"
Luckly I never got feedback like that. :laugh: yet..

As for it been too green, did they mean the nebula itself ?

Think 'negative ' was probably the wrong choice of words Dave. Constructive critism would be more appropriate and which I really appreciate since as you say fresh eyes etc. You tend to get a bit blinkered when trying new techniques.

Comments were that the inner part of the neb was too green and should be bluer so I went back to the drawing board tonight and came up with:


NGC281 Final Edit