Title: Lion Nebula with quasi-true color stars
Description:
Most of you know about this nebula more than I do. So, I won't tire you with probably incomplete descriptions.
What I bring here is an alternative color representation.
I am not very fond of the colors in which this region of the space in commonly represented, which probably has to do with the original intensities. I tried most common SHO, HOO, and other known (dynamic) variations of them; but I did not like the results. This led me to the idea of trying a less saturated color palette.
My choice was to represent hydrogen in shades of grey; sulfur in golden tones, and oxygen in cyan. To this end, I made the following RGB assignment:
R = 0.66*S2 + 0.34*Ha
G = 0.33*S2 + 0.34*Ha + 0.33*O3
B = 0.66*O3 + 0.34*Ha
While in the previous version, I tweaked the image to be more golden by stretching the narrow-band sources independently, here I combined them before stretching, and made no later adjustment to the ratios.
Another thing that I changed in this version is the stars. Previously I used neutral grey stars taken from the cleaner (Ha) channel. Here I employed a quasi-true color narrow-band equivalent combination
R_stars = Ha; G_stars = 0.2*Ha + 0.8*O3, B_stars = O3.
Thanks to Lukomatico (youtube channel) I learned to use the gradient corrector from PixInsight, which also for me seems to work better than GraXpert, and allowed me to neutralise the background much better.
I am also trying GHS, instead of using the standard Histogram tool.
I am not sure which version I like the most ...
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