How To Process Your Own Colour Images From Hubble Data

You can search for objects by a number of criteria: New General Catalogue (NGC) numbers, IPPPSSOOT names, proposal IDs, location, and even names such as “Eagle Nebula” which are referenced against the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED)[2] X Research source or the SIMBAD Astronomical Database[3] X Research source when necessary.

An example of a good set of filters would be WFPC2 F450W (Blue), WFPC2 F555W (Green), and WFPC2 F814W (Red).

The outcome of the image will be affected by the filters chosen, and the settings used in FITS Liberator.

Play with your results and you can make something truly beautiful. The image to the right is of NGC 6357 and was made using WFC F658N for blue, WFC F660N for red, and an average of the two for green using the same method with heavy post-processing.