Edited 3/24/24:

Ended up unhappy with the original process.  I went through a couple times and tried reprocessing with my HSO technique but no matter how I did it, the balance of Ha and Oiii in this region really wasn't appealing to the final image, always leaving it with the pink, bubble gum look.  Sticking with a classic HOO process wasn't going to do it for me either.   I ended up with basic SHO because it definitely showcases the different areas of the image alot better than before.   The 'beam' that flows outward from WR134 really blends nicely with these colors.  I'm much happier with this process, but SHO as a whole just isn't the way I wanted to end up.


Original as follows:

Collecting the data was only half the battle!   You'll either love it, or hate it.

Going deep with 20 minute exposures, I thought capturing Wolf-Rayet 134 was going to take time and pose a small challenge. To my surprise it actually showed up very strong, very quickly.   The original plan was to present it in HOO palette, but I had some spare time and decided to let the sulfur channel expose for awhile.   The real challenge came when it was time to process the image.  The typical SHO palette was just not appealing to me.   There were a few areas that popped, but overall the hydrogen was just too strong and drowned out the shell of WR134, and let's be real, green is going out of style.     

So I thought, how can I present this in a way that shows off the shell, but doesn't ruin the detail of the Ha and Sii emissions?   Well.  It took me days of trying different combinations, getting frustrated, unhappy with the colors.... but the reality is, you just can't. Half of the shell is obscured by hydrogen and sulfur emissions, it will simply never work unless you tone back on the beautiful structures surrounding it.  

So, I accepted defeat, but I developed a method that sticks somewhat with the traditional HOO presentation of this area, but also keeps the depth added by the sulfur data.  This technique involved combining the Ha and Sii into an SHH palette for the initial image, then manually adding the Oiii data into the green and blue channels.    The result presents a bit of a 'bubble gum' palette, but it's quickly grown on me.  Thanks to Astrobins hover feature, I was able to add an image of just the oxygen data to reveal the shell popping out from behind all the Ha/Sii.  Overall, I feel this image accurately represents the layers of emission, and provides a bit of depth most WR134 compositions don't have.

Hope you enjoy!