are colors of nebuli, galleries, pictures, true?

Question

i love looking at pictures of cosmos. i just wonder if the colors you see on say the science channel are correct. in other words, if you were to travel to distant nebuli, would you see these beautiful colors, or would you need to look through special lenses or take pictures on infrared or any other special type of film?

Answer 1

The way you word your question, the answer may have to be "no", even though the colours in the picutres could be the real ones. Problem is that the amount of light given off is often so low that our eyes will not capture it correctly...

In addition, many of the pictures are taken with films (or CCD cameras) that do not respond to different colours in the same manner than our eyes do. Our eyes are more sensible to green, most photographic films are more sensible to blue and, for CCD cameras, colour is created by taking a series of B&W shots through separate filters (the choice of filters and duration of exposure may decide which colour gets to dominate).

In addition, there are good reasons to change the way the colours look after processing a picture. Sometimes you want to enhance contrast (either the traditional luminosity contranst or the color contrast: for example, some pictures of the surface of Mars are taken in blue and red only, skipping the green, to show better the difference between rocks and soil).

Answer 2

Most of these objects are too faint for their colors to register on the human eye. Getting close wouldn't matter, because their light would then be spread over a very wide area, so the surface brightness stays the same.

The human eye can pick up the green and blue light from some types of nebulae; even through an amateur telescope you can see color in many planetary nebulae. But the red light of hydrogen seen in most emission nebulae is too far into the red and too faint to see with the naked eye. It shows up in astrophotos because CCDs and most films are sensitive to it.

Many astrophotographs are color-balanced to bring out the various emissions, not to simulate the sensitivity of the human eye. They may even include infrared or ultraviolet light beyond the sensitivity of the human eye, translated into colors you can see. So at a minimum, an astrophoto is apt to be far more vividly colored than you would ever see the object, and in many cases, the color palette has been modified to include light beyond the visible as well.

Answer 3

No, the colors you see in those pictures are the result of the particular object being photographed through special filters that bring out the various colors. When you look directly at any celestial object you'll not see any color at all -- just shades of gray.

By the way -- those colors in the photographs result from the various elements present in the nebula or galaxy.

Answer 4

Your eye cannot see the colors usually shown because these objects are too dim for your eye. The pictures are the result of long exposure photography. Similar methods would make a picture of your back yard taken at night look like it was taken in broad daylight.

When viewed by eye through a telescope, most of the deep sky objects (like nebulae and galaxies) look gray or pale greenish. And they look extremely dim, showing little of the complex detail you see in the pictures.

Answer 5

Yes and no

This is a bit wired.

Some of the emit light in visible wavelength. So if they are shot using a device (such as, a CCD) sensitive in visible wavelength, their original color is recorded.

But often, they emit light in a bandwidth lower or higher than visible wavelength.

In this case, the computer processed image applies something called "false color".

That is, replacing a invisible band with a visible color. In this case you are not likely to see anything if you go to the nebula.


If it's a mixed case, then you will see something, but not the color you might expected.


This one is a false color image : http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031007.html


This is a original color image: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990914.html

Answer 6

If you go there you may not see the same thing up close. the earth looks blue from space, but lean over and look at the ground and youll see its not blue. your vantage point makes all the difference in the colors you perceive.

Answer 7

to be sure, some colours are enhanced. in reality, sure color exists.color is the product of bent light, the angle of the bend to be precise, just as in white light bent by a prisim.

Answer 8

The colours of nebulae in photographs are sometimes false colour but not always.

Answer 9

yep

Answer 10

yes