Seeing celestial objects in white

One thing i have noticed (not sure if its the scope or me or whatever)...

So far all the planets i observe have colour. Many of the stars (Aldebran,Beetlejuice etc) have colour...but do you think i can see any colour in the Orion Neb!!!.

NADA......

I'm gonna put this down to distance and the loss of colour as it crosses the void and reaches my scope and my eyes.

I see mainly white and orange in Mars, Orion nebula to me is distinctly green. Tonight I held up my digital camera to the eyepiece and took an 8 second exposure of the nebula, came out red, bit blurry but it's the first ever photo I've taken of the sky and much better than I can see with my own eyes

Hi Keith,
Aperture masks are an interesting beast, they can actually improve the image sharpness during times of bad seeing.
It might be worth experimenting with this just for that alone, but it wont help on colour.
My reading of it is that bad seeing will result in a more blurry image, sharp red or blurry red is still red.
I play around with orange and yellow filters (meade series) to reduce the glare, to be honest you get used to the glare fairly quickly so I don't always use a filter.
If you're eyes pass the colour tests, then it must be a case of differing expectations, how do you see betelgeaux through the scope, focused and unfocused ??

Thats what I figured, that bad seeing or colimation would affect contrast and detail level but not colour. Thanks for confirming

Aha Betelguese! I actually noticed this the other night with the Bino's. I looked up naked eye and thought Wow. Betelguese is finally living up to its Red Giant standing. Took out the Bino's and it was gold. Huh??? Defocussed the bino's and....aha....much redder again.

ANyway I am just heading out now for an observing session. Cupla things to try.

Defocuse like dave said.

Try my left eye for the first time. Maybe the vision isn't as good but colour perception in that eye might be better.

Try my barlowed Orion Sirius Plossl 10mm in place of the 5mm Hyperion. Maybe to much glass in the Hyps (8 lenses!)

I scoped Mars tonight. I have to say it was mainly white. I defocused and it took on its true colour.

Other nights i dont need to defocus. I put it down to air currents and thermals.

I found the Orion Nebula to be a shade of White tonight, in the little time i had before the clouds rolled over again. I guess thats me for tonight, though i did catch beautiful Saturn once more.

The Sky Scout has a nightly list of highlights to observe. I think i'm just gonna go with that for now and see what happens. I'm sure i'll cover a lot more ground (space) and see things that i wouldnt normally target.

Maybe i should change my name to "The lazy assed astronmer".

The highlights cover a good range of objects from the moon,planets,Messier objects,clusters.................a bit of everything really.

Think i might get a green laser to mount on the scout though cuz by the time you find something in the scout and then go to the scope.............you forget exactly where it was pointing.

I CAN mount the scout on top of my scope but to find anything i would have to keep loosening and tightening the screws on the RA and DEC axis and basically use my scope as a point and view set-up.