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Massive-Peanut7111 t1_j79smxy wrote

Reply to comment by Machanskid86 in NGC6188 - Dragons of Ara Emission Nebula by Machanskid86

Sorry for my ignorance 😅 I feel like you explained it here, but are these colors real?

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Machanskid86 OP t1_j79v4mb wrote

Hi, this is a false colour image taken using narrowband filters.

The nebula is called an emission nebula. An emission nebula is a nebula formed of ionized gases that emit light of various wavelengths. The most common source of ionization is high-energy ultraviolet photons emitted from a nearby hot star. The common wavelengths that astronomers like to capture are those from ionised Sulphur (Sii), Hydrogen (Ha) and Oxygen (Oiii). I use a monochromatic camera and then use filters to capture the light. For this image I used filters that are called narrowband filters because they only capture a very narrow part of the light spectrum. The ones I used capture Sii, Ha and Oiii. I then assign each of these filters to a colour to produce the final image. The Hubble Palette was developed by NASA and it basically maps Sii data to red, Ha to green and Oiii to blue.

This video has a really good explanation on narrowband astrophotography. https://youtu.be/0Fp2SlhlprU

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Massive-Peanut7111 t1_j7a1eqa wrote

wow thank you! I appreciate learning new things :) I’ll definitely check out the vid too. Beautiful image

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gstormcrow80 t1_j7bqc4u wrote

It’s it explained in the video OP links below, but those bandwidths are pronounced “S-2” “H-alpha” and “O-3”.

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