Figure 1 – M16 Eagle Nebula and the Pillars of Creation. (c) DE Wolf 2021.

I have been continuing to experiment with remote astrophotography and have specifically been grabbling with the question of whether to go with color or black and white. There is something pure, simple, and elegant with black and white, and you don’t have to deal with the very subjective issue of color. Of course, you can calibrate the color – a tedious process and one not all that likely to give you something pleasing. There is a fundamental conflict between the scientifically accurate image and the aesthetically pleasing one. Indeed, there is even the fundamental issue of what you mean by scientifically accurate. Do you mean that the greyscales are linear so that there is a “true” intensity relationship between points in space? Or do you mean that the intensity range follows and reports on the sensitivity of the human eye?  

Figure 1 is an image that I took on a 200 mm telescope in the Namibian desert  (Hakos Veloce 200 RH) of M-16, the Great Eagle Nebula and in particular highlights the so called “Pillars of Creation” made famous by the Hubble Space Telescope.  This of course, swings me very strongly towards the purity of black and white. But we shall see!