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Try `cubehelix' colour scheme

This colour scheme is described in more detail in:

• Green, D. A., 2011, `A colour scheme for the display of astronomical intensity images', Bulletin of the Astronomical Society of India, 39, 289.
  (2011BASI...39..289G at ADS.)

Please cite this paper if you use `cubehelix' in any publications.

Using javascript, you can try out different `cubehelix' colour schemes below, and optionally produce a `look-up-table' file in several formats. Adjust the parameters -- either choose from the pre-set values, or choose `specify value' and give a particular value -- press the `refresh plots' button.

When you are satisfied, press one of the `make ...' buttons, which will write the text of the `look-up-table' file into another window/tab. The formats available are (a) DS9/saoimage (copy to a local file to then read in), (b) decimal values for the fraction along the look-up-table (i.e. 0.0 to 1.0), and red/green/blue intensities (again 0.0 to 1.0), (c) the fraction along the look-up-table, and red/green/blue intensities in hex (00 to FF), (d) kvis look-up-table (in hex format, to convert to binary for use, copy to a local file and then (for Unix/Linux) use "xxd -ps -r file.txt file.kf", where file.txt is the file you save the output to, and file.kf is the binary file to write). You can reverse the output from the usual black → white to white → black if needed.

This uses the PNGlib javascript library by Robert Eisele to generate png images in the browser (this works with Firefox, Safari and Chrome but not with IE; I do not know about other browsers).