In message , Doink
writes
Greetings Friends,

I have found that a lot of money can be saved by consulting with this group
before spending money.

We had a star party here on the ranch this past Saturday. It was a
fantastic event...the experienced astronomer I invited as our "expert"
showed us the Veil Nebula through an OIII filter. At least he said it was
an OIII filter. The OIII filters I've seen online are green. This was a
Red Filter---at least I noticed a slight red cast to the stars.

In daylight most narrow bandpass interference filters look metallic like
a mirror. The Lumicon OIII filter has a significant red leak. Other
brands I have seen do not. How you see star colours through these
bandpass filters is subjective. Through Lumicon OIII they look an odd
oily red off green colour to me. In rival filters they look a turquoise
bordering cyan colour.

The red leak lets Halpha through but may be a disadvantage if there is a
lot of HPS sodium light about.

He kept
saying it was green...anyway. I was blown away with the view---the detail
was amazing. He put the filter on my eyepiece on my scope...so I know my
scope is capable.

So, to see nebluae well, what filter should I look for? I see OIII's, and
Nebula Filters and Other things!!!!

For a first filter either a UHC or UltraBlock isn't a bad choice.

The easy way to see what light any of these filters lets though is to
look at a reflection spectrum from a CD through the filter you want to
test.

Can someone help clarify. My experience with filters is like everything. I
bought the basic set at Orion and have found them to be useless.

The standard nebula filter will also disappoint. YMMV
They are OK for photography but pretty dull visually.

Regards,
--
Martin Brown