Is this a real picture?

Question

That is to say if I looked at this with my own eyes from such a distance would it look like this or was this photo touched up with artistic aspects?

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire_collection/pr2007036a/

Answer 1

yes its real,
heres another picture of the galaxies but in a different spectrum
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~jhibbard/Survey/UHgifs/u06643.gif
different cameras give different images, but I do believe the first answer is correct.

more than likely a black and white picture, touched up with color on a computer.

Answer 2

It is real but your eyes could not see it that way even if you were close. It is a long exposure photograph that makes things look brighter than the would to your eye. Such a photograph, taken at night, would show things as if it were daytime. If you have a digital camera with a manual mode that can take exposures several seconds long you can do something like that yourself. Set the camera on a table or mount it on a tripod outside at night, set a manual shutter speed of 15 seconds or some long time like that and take a picture. If it includes part of the night sky you will get stars in the picture. If it includes your dark back yard, the picture will show the yard brightly lit up. If there are any street lights or porch lights or lighted windows in the scene, they will he hopelessly over exposed.

These galaxies are all dim, just like the Milky Way. They would look just as dim as the Milky Way does to your eye from Earth. So it takes more than a telescope. It also takes a sensitive camera and long exposure. The picture is real, but not what your eyes alone could see even if you were close.

Answer 3

Yes, and no.

The picture is real, but it was constructed from three (or more) black and white pictures taken with different color filters, then reconstructed by a computer.
Computer takes the 'red' black and while picture, and makes every lit portion red instead of white. Then it does the same with the 'green' black and white picture, and with the 'blue' black and white picture; then it adds all the pictures together to reconstruct a full-color view.

Then, it is possible that the picture was electronically 'sharpened' and that the contrast is adjusted to make it easier for a viewer to see the main features (like spiral arms and dust bands).

Also, in order for your eyes to see that amount of detail, they would need 2.5 metre-large pupils, instead of the usual 7 mm. Also, our eyes only accumulate light for about 1/10 of a second, unlike the Hubble camera which might accumulate light for minutes in order to see very faint sources. And then, computers can 'add' the light from many such exposures to create brighter images (our eyes cannot).

Answer 4

It´s a real picture alright. And you ARE at the same distance from ARP 87 as the Hubble. You can´t see this with your naked eyes however. The "trick" to taking a picture like this is to capture as many photons as possible over a very long period of time. The HST can do this because it is above earth and earths atmosphere. It can theoretically focus on any point in space with its cameras shutters open for any period of time. On earth a telescope will have to cope with atmospheric flutter and the inevitable sunrise. And your eyes can´t even come close to seeing anything like this as your brain makes a new image all the time discarding the light your retina had captured previously. A human can´t keep the "shutter" open because we need to see movement.

Answer 5

if you had scrolled down on that page and followed the links, you'd have not needed to ask....

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/36/image/a

"This image is a composite of many separate exposures made by the WFPC2 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. Three filters were used to sample broad wavelength ranges, while one filter was used to sample a narrow wavelength band. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are:..... "

Answer 6

When they take pictures like this one of the decisions is whether to make a true colour image, or a false colour image.

A true colour image shows the colours as our eyes would see them, if our eyes were thousands of times more sensitive to light.

A false colour image manipulates colour to show other information, but does not match the response of our eyes.

The picture in question is a true colour image.

Answer 7

Yeah, that's what I wondered. Right now they have a mag issue out with all the great hubble photos and they all say "color" added, so to me, that is fake. It looks like crap when it is black and white.

Answer 8

No, it's real, but the colors are 'fake' in that they were taken with a black and white digital camera (CCD) with multiple different color filters.

Answer 9

This looks real to me. Dona G.

Answer 10

It's probably real. And it could also be edited.