It depends. If it was somebody using their digital or film camera, then yes, the pictures are the real colors. If it’s from a professional-grade telescope like Hubble, then no. The images are all black-and-white, but taken through different color filters. The images need to be black-and-white for the science we do with them, but the colors are usually a pretty close approximation to how it actually looks, assuming the picture was taken with visible light and not x-rays or radio waves.
minuteblue Said,
If you were to look through these very large telescopes you may detect some color, usually shades of green, blue, yellow, or maybe occasionally a little red, but the human eye, in general, is not able to detect the color from most celestial objects.
Cameras, on the other hand, can be very color sensitive. The photos may depict the color the object actually is that you and I can’t see, or filters may have been used to detect certain wavelengths (colors) over others.
Some telescopes aren’t optical. In these instances the photos usually depict a visual reconstruction of the image and the color, being in a wavelength which is out of range of the human eye, is mapped down or up into the visible spectrum.
Often times, astronomers may take multiple images of an object with different types of filters and telescope and then bring it all into the visible spectrum and merge it together to give them a more complete understanding of what they are looking at.
odimwitdwon Said,
Now days it is rare for film to be used to capture an image from a telescope. Astronomers use the same thing we do in our cameras (and phones) a CCD. The light is often filtered so that they photograph one color at a time. When they join them back together to get the “pictures” you see they usually amplify the color differences making very slight differences seem like totally different colors. Even pictures of the planets can be tweaked this way. Heres an example from here on Earth. Lets say it a really foggy day. You can only see a few meters in front of you. You are driving along and can see pine trees (evergreens) and rocks faintly through the fog. In a non-”tweaked” picture the trees would look almost black and the rocks would too. After they get done tweaking, the trees look like bright green christmas trees and the rocks are a gray as a circus elephant. So they take real small differences in color and blow them up to exaggerate the colors. Most of what you can see thru a telescope are very very slight differences in hue of white. CCDs can also record light from the infrared and the ultraviolet which we can’t even see. They can squeeze these to make the ultra violet look indigo and the infrared look red –in fact they can convert radio waves to this kind of false color picture.
When you’ve looked thru the telescope for a while you begin to appreciate the subtle (and beautiful) differences in color. But to convey that to the average gal or guy it is often “sexed” up.
Tina L Said,
all astronomical pictures are false colour to a certain extent.
at the very minimum, the colours are what we would see if our eyes were many times more sensitive to light.
the colour rendition may be adjusted to match the phenomenon being observed. in this case they assign colours, which do not necessarily match what colour our eyes would see for the same wavelength. this is particularly true for wavelengths our eyes cannot see.
Comments
It depends. If it was somebody using their digital or film camera, then yes, the pictures are the real colors. If it’s from a professional-grade telescope like Hubble, then no. The images are all black-and-white, but taken through different color filters. The images need to be black-and-white for the science we do with them, but the colors are usually a pretty close approximation to how it actually looks, assuming the picture was taken with visible light and not x-rays or radio waves.
If you were to look through these very large telescopes you may detect some color, usually shades of green, blue, yellow, or maybe occasionally a little red, but the human eye, in general, is not able to detect the color from most celestial objects.
Cameras, on the other hand, can be very color sensitive. The photos may depict the color the object actually is that you and I can’t see, or filters may have been used to detect certain wavelengths (colors) over others.
Some telescopes aren’t optical. In these instances the photos usually depict a visual reconstruction of the image and the color, being in a wavelength which is out of range of the human eye, is mapped down or up into the visible spectrum.
Often times, astronomers may take multiple images of an object with different types of filters and telescope and then bring it all into the visible spectrum and merge it together to give them a more complete understanding of what they are looking at.
Now days it is rare for film to be used to capture an image from a telescope. Astronomers use the same thing we do in our cameras (and phones) a CCD. The light is often filtered so that they photograph one color at a time. When they join them back together to get the “pictures” you see they usually amplify the color differences making very slight differences seem like totally different colors. Even pictures of the planets can be tweaked this way. Heres an example from here on Earth. Lets say it a really foggy day. You can only see a few meters in front of you. You are driving along and can see pine trees (evergreens) and rocks faintly through the fog. In a non-”tweaked” picture the trees would look almost black and the rocks would too. After they get done tweaking, the trees look like bright green christmas trees and the rocks are a gray as a circus elephant. So they take real small differences in color and blow them up to exaggerate the colors. Most of what you can see thru a telescope are very very slight differences in hue of white. CCDs can also record light from the infrared and the ultraviolet which we can’t even see. They can squeeze these to make the ultra violet look indigo and the infrared look red –in fact they can convert radio waves to this kind of false color picture.
When you’ve looked thru the telescope for a while you begin to appreciate the subtle (and beautiful) differences in color. But to convey that to the average gal or guy it is often “sexed” up.
all astronomical pictures are false colour to a certain extent.
at the very minimum, the colours are what we would see if our eyes were many times more sensitive to light.
the colour rendition may be adjusted to match the phenomenon being observed. in this case they assign colours, which do not necessarily match what colour our eyes would see for the same wavelength. this is particularly true for wavelengths our eyes cannot see.