Enhancing colours when observing planets ... if the clouds ever clear!

[Obi Wan]

Hi everyone,

how do you enhance the colours on planets e.g. Jupiter? I have a Skywatcher 127 and love looking at the moon and planets with it. However, I would like to know how I could enhance the colours as the bands are very pale and although I can make 2 out my other half can't. I already have a baader neodymium moon and skyglow filter but wondered if a coloured filter would be better. There seems to be mixed reviews on the use of them and its confusing trying to work out which colour I should use.

Also on a different topic, should I use a filter when looking at nebulae and if so which is best for my size of scope? Again this seems to be a bit of a minefield and very confusing- not that it's hard to confuse me!

Thanks

[Daniel-K]

i find a blue filter helps bring alot of detail out on jupiter with a 6mm EP i have seen swirls in the gas bands

[Stargazer_00]

Hi

Differrent coloured filters (apparently) make different features stand out better on the planets. I heard, for instance, that a red filter makes the bands of jupiter more easy to see but obviously this means you are viewing everything in red. Colour filters will give you monochrome viewing but more detail. The colour of your filter & black. If you are happy to view in 2 tone then more detail can be had this way. I personally much prefer the raw colour of the actual object in all its glory. I dont own any colour filters whatsoever and have no intention of ever getting any either. I do own a neodynium filter and it sort of helps a bit I guess, not really had much use out of it as again I prefer to just view as is.

Mind you I was using a UHC filter the other day and I swung it over Jupiter to have a looked and i do think it allowed more detail. Was using it in my refractor which suffers a little from CA. The UHC completely killed any CA as well, everything was just green. No fringe at all. didn't like the view personally. - like to see some white, orange,pink and red in my jupiter views.

[rwilkey]

Hi Obi Wan, going back to your original post, there are two main nebula filters that would enhance your views of nebulae, they are the UHC (Ultra High Contrast) and the OIII (Oxegen 3), the UHC is the first one to get as that is effective on more objects, however the OIII is better at some objects such as the Veil (and as others have said hereabouts, will make the invisable visable, this is true of the Veil and selected planetary nebula such as the Owl in Ursa Major for example). Nebula filters come in several price bands with the Sky Watcher being the cheaper and Lumicon the more expensive, it's up to you and your pocket what you choose, but they all work very well, I have the Sky Watcher and they are very good. I also have the Lumicon, they are better engineered but are quite expensive. Astronomik are also a very good make but I have not tried them. You will also need to decide whether you go down the 2" route or the 1.25" route. I started with 1.25" but soon changed to 2", which I prefer as I tend to use my nebula filters when using wide-field 2" ep's.