Multi-Coloured Heart (IC 1805)

[Lucas M]

Something I both love and hate about this hobby is the freedom of processing and getting to make your own decision on what looks good/what makes a good image.

The engineer in me wants the images to look as realistic and true colour as possible, the painter in me loves the ability to play with the processing until an image "speaks" to me.

This image is IC 1805 the Heart Nebula, just over 6 hours of data (dithered and drizzled) +darks, flats & biases, taken at 250mm (redcat 51) using a 533MC Pro and an Optolong L-Extreme dual narrowband filter.

The 4 images are the exact same stack, processed in Siril and photoshop to give some drastically different results.  To me all are equally valid, all are equally beautiful and all brought the painter in me joy while creating them, while at the same time frustrating the engineer in me because I have no idea which (if any) is the truest representation of the object.