the dragons of ara NGC 6188

Ive been using the remote telescope site http://www.telescope.live to download data for astrophotography. You pay a set monthly fee and then can download raw data they already have from their telescopes or set upi your own imaging session. once you downlaod the data you can process it anyway you wish and with astrophotography the processing is the key

this is NGC 6188 known as the dragons of ara. it a star forming region about 4000 light years away. I used 19 hours of data using 3 separate filters to emphasize different parts of teh nebula. its a Hydrogen alpha,a silicon and an oxygen filter

first up is using whats called the Hubble palette since its what the hubble uses a lot for its photos. Sulfur is mapped to red,H-alpha to green and oxygen to blue.



next up is the same photo except the stars have been removed



Third is edited using the HOO palette

H-alpha is mapped to red,Oxygen to both green and blue sulfur is discarded


4th and last is using teh HSO palette
Hydrogen to red,sulfur to green and oxygen to blue. this is close to what can be called "natural colors" both hydrogen alpha and sulfur are red and oxygen is blue. both h-alpha and sulfur are naturally red and oxygen is naturally blueish green
Hydrogen alpha is by far the strongest wavelength of light coming from a nebula which is why most of them are reddish in photos