Sky & Telescope - June 2022 - 64

COLOR CHOICES by Ron Brecher
W
ant to know the truth about color in astrophotography?
Well, it isn't black and white, that's for sure. The
fact is, color is subjective. We all perceive color slightly
differently - images evoke different perceptions depending
on the viewer, because seeing a photo involves the entire eyeto-brain
visual system. A quick glance at the various color
choices applied to photos of any particular deep-sky object
makes it clear that there is no single " correct " way to present
color. Some imagers prefer bold, saturated colors, while others
opt for a more muted palette.
Beauty is literally in the eye of the beholder. For those of us
who image the night sky, the first and most important judge
of every image is its creator. And while there's plenty of room
for flexibility, your color choices shouldn't be random. Variations
in hue and saturation throughout an image can provide
important clues to the chemistry and physical structure of
your subject. Those choices require a few guiding principles.
Color from Black and White
In today's era of digital photography, virtually every sensor
in every digital camera is monochrome, meaning it produces
images rendered in shades of gray, ranging from pure black to
pure white. These grayscale images contain no color. This is
true even for the raw images from consumer digital cameras,
including the one in your cell phone. Since these detectors
are sensitive to visible light (and more), they require a
method to isolate specific wavelengths from different parts of
the spectrum - for example, red, green, and blue - that are
then combined to make a color picture.
The detectors in your cell phones, DSLRs, and other color
cameras contain a built-in array of microscopic red, green,
or blue color filters over the pixels. These filters are arranged
in a repeating pattern of R, G, and B filters like a checkerboard,
dividing up the detector into the three primary colors
(though some include a fourth, clear filter). The grayscale
WHAT COLOR IS IT? Images of deep-sky objects can tell us different
things depending on how they were acquired. These pictures of emission
nebula IC 5070 in Cygnus were shot through both broadband color
(left) and narrowband filters (right). The natural-color image shows the
region dominated by reddish hydrogen-alpha nebulosity, while the narrowband
image highlights the distribution of ionized oxygen (O III) and
sulfur (S II).
Palettes of the Deep Sky
Different filters help reveal
the chemistry of the universe.
64 JUNE 2022 * SKY & TELESCOPE

Sky & Telescope - June 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - June 2022

Contents
Sky & Telescope - June 2022 - Cover1
Sky & Telescope - June 2022 - Cover2
Sky & Telescope - June 2022 - 1
Sky & Telescope - June 2022 - Contents
Sky & Telescope - June 2022 - 3
Sky & Telescope - June 2022 - 4
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