I have a collection of photos taken with telescopes that are so amazing and beautiful, I can't believe the colors are natural.
2006-11-28 23:36:27 · 8 answers · asked by The Gadfly 5 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
I do a lot of Astrophotography myself. When I get the RAW image it definately does not have that much color. With long exposures you get more light which helps. I usually have to up the saturation and tweak it to give it more coloring. The best to look for is the Orion Nebula, since it is the closest.
2006-11-29 00:14:40 · answer #1 · answered by C M 1 · 2⤊ 0⤋
The colors are real - the nearer planets (mars, jupiter) do reflect enough sunlight that you can see the colors through a good (8 in+) telescope.
However, nebulaes and other objects that are further out usually gain there colors from the effect of gases within them being excited by radiation and they emit colors just like a neon light does. A long exposure photo can pick up the colors (and many photos are composites of several photos taken with different filters that enhance particular colors).
The reason we can't see the colors through telescopes ourselves is that our eyes have two types of detectors; rods and cones. The rods detect black and white and are situated nearest around the iris. Cones detect color but are located further from the iris. Light coming into a lens on a tscope is focused sharply and the cones don't get exposed to it so the color is distinguishable.
2006-11-29 01:47:52 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Just like different colored lights filled with gasses (neon, argon, helium etc) every gas gives off a different color when it's hit with some energy and then releases the energy. The colors are just the natural colors. However, our eyes have a threshold for color perception. In dim light, we really don't see in color so in the small telescopes and binoculars most people have access to, there's not enough light for our color perception to kick in. The film and the solid state cameras don't have these limitations.
2006-11-28 23:46:03 · answer #3 · answered by Gene 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Some of the color is natrual, like with the case of Jupiter, sometimes NASA enhances subtle color differences with computers or filters to make them more observable. This is even more true for photos of deep space objects such as gas clouds, nebula and galaxies, they are actually fairly bland to the naked eye, NASA enhances the colors.
2006-11-29 13:02:35 · answer #4 · answered by ZeedoT 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It's false color. Our eyes only distinguish so well in the "visible light" range. Outside of that we can't see anything. So they use false color so we can distinguish between temperatures of gasses more easily.
2006-11-29 00:46:17 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
The truth is that it's enhanced by computers to give more color.
2006-11-28 23:38:37 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/meaning_of_color/index.shtml
2006-11-29 04:26:39 · answer #7 · answered by ajramos_03 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Only their hairdresser knows for sure.
2006-11-28 23:38:05 · answer #8 · answered by Master_of_my_own_domain 4 · 0⤊ 3⤋