Coloring Nebula

Standing here staring at the screen. I’m working on art, and I’m wondering: what color are nebulae, anyway? All the images we see are artificially colored, so far as I know. Like this series of images from the Hubble, of the Crab Nebula. I could lose hours wandering through the image gallery on that site. 

I could choose hot pinks and lime greens and be right. I could get deep into color theory and why certain colors make us happy, or introspective, or passionate… Or I could try to deduce the possible molecular composition of the gas clouds and what we know about the colors of the flames from those elements/compounds. That’s what the scientists do. The question then becomes: am I aiming for science, or art? 

 I could just use my imagination. Which requires more coffee.

I liked the warm colors for this one. So it’s “Pop Nebula”
The “Purple Ice” was never meant to be realistic – in fact, this peice was rendered to be a part of a magical effect on a book cover. I liked the lacy edges of the ‘clouds’
“Sword Nebula” was again, not realistic, but the colors evoke emotion for me, and a sense of a weird and wonderful universe to explore.

Comments

2 responses to “Coloring Nebula”

  1. well, most color nebula pic are kinda blurry. the artificially colored ones are based off of those

  2. What color are nebulae? Why, they’re nebulous, of course!

    😉