Are the brilliant colors we see in photos of space really visual like they seem?

Question

Or, is it just computerized coloring of different radiation and energy emissions to help us distinguish between them?

http://images.google.com/images?q=photos...

Whoops, wrong link... sorry!

Answer 1

No. The cameras aboard spacecraft can run long exposure times (many seconds, to hours) to collect lots of photons for their detectors. The human eyeball is limited to what it can pick up and process in a few hundredths of a second.

Furthermore, spacecraft cameras are limited by what is passed by the filter that sits in front of the detector, since the detector itself only detects light levels in each of its pixel elements. In order to generate color components of an image, a set of filters is rotated in front of the detector. Each one only passes a narrow band of frequencies corresponding to UV/blue, green, and red/near IR. So for every image you see released to the public, the spacecraft has actually taken three. They are recombined and adjusted by imaging scientists to produce interesting looking false-color images, or approximately true-color images . . . which come close to what you might see if you were actually there, but they're not exactly like it.

Even pictures taken through telescopes on Earth, using photographic film, aren't quite like what you'd actually see. Astrophotographers take long, long exposures, collecting a lot of light, so you can see details in their photos you'd miss with the naked eye. Also, the response curve of the photographic film to light of differing colors isn't exactly the same as the response-curve for the human eye.

Answer 2

It depends. In some cases, like the photographs from teh Mars probes, yes--that's what it would look like if you were standing there.

Some photoes you see are not "the way they would look" because they are taken using a different light spectrum. For example, a distant star might be photographed using film sensitive to infrared light. This gives us an image that can reveal information that using only visible light would not provide--and it's "real" as far as it goes--but it's not how the object would look to us if we could see it with the naked eye. Scientists often use various such enhancing techniques to get clearer photos or to uncover more information. Usually, on good science sites (or articles in magazines) the caption will tell you what, if any, special techniques were used. I'm afraid that popular science writers arn't always as careful as tey should be about this,, though.

Answer 3

Some colors are real and some are not. The ones that are real are much less brilliant, so the press doesn't usually print them. If the caption does not say "true color" or "natural color", then assume it is enhanced somehow. The source is an example of real, true color in a Hubble picture.

Answer 4

Most of the pictures we see are not as vibrant as they seem. Since most are taken using x-ray and gamma ray detectors to create a picture, they seem to be a myriad of colors, which isn't the real truth. If pictures of space were taken using a light compound telescope, we would get very blurry pictures, and the pictures wouldnt be detailed at all. Many pictures are false colored

Answer 5

No, the brilliant colors are enhancements. But the galaxies do have their own beauty.