Space picture question.?

Question

I am just curious. The pictures that the Hubble Space Telescope takes always look crazy awesome and stuff.. but I know this is because they are shown with a combo of x-ray images and other filters and stuff. My question is, what would the nebulas look like if saw it with your own eyes (like the one in the link below).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Stellar_spire_eagle_nebula.jpg/296px-Stellar_spire_eagle_nebula.jpg

Answer 1

It depends. In most cases, like the Eagle Nebula (that's what the picture os of) it would look very much like what you see. Except that in som cases (I don't know if this is one) the image you saw with your own eyes might be a lot dimmer.

That's also true of some pictures we have o fobjects in our own solar system--those that are reallly far out. "What you see is what you get," so to speak, but because the sunlight is very dim far out, the picutres are presented with the illuminationn enhanced. Note--that is NOT always the case. Pictures of Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn are very much like what you'd see with your own eyes.

Some photograps you see are of things that don't look the way they do in the picutures, simply because they aren't taken using visible light--they are using infrared, UV, or various other frequencies. That's not the case with Hubble pictures, though--it uses visible light.

One way to tell about partiular pictures, if you want to take the time--go to the scientific source website and look for the commentary on tthe picture. Normally it will say eexactly what kind of light the picture was taken in and what, if any, enhancements were used.

Answer 2

Modern telescopes use CCD cameras with exposure times ranging from seconds to hours to take pictures of nebulae and other deep space objects. The long exposure times allows for more light to enter the camera and for dimmer objects to be brighter and to have greater resolution or detail. X-ray and other images are recorded in false colors. You can find pictures of nebulae in visible light taken from the hubble space telescope if you google astronomy pictures archives. Hope this helps

Answer 3

Our eyes are highly specialized organs and they are adapted to function in a human environment. This means seeing the things we need to see in order to survive, find a mate and pass on our genes to offspring before dying. What we call "visible light" is really just an extremely narrow bandwith of a much larger spectrum of electromagnetic radiation all around us. There is surely some survival value for humans to be able to see stars at night: It may have played a role in the development of civilization, agriculture, planning for the seasons, and that sort of thing.

Human eyes have sensors endowed with a pigment called "visual purple" and this gives us some ability to see in dim nighttime conditions. Nevertheless, our eyes aren't as well adapted for night vision as they could be if we were nocturnal creatures. That is why the Milky Way, especially in light-polluted areas where many people live, looks like a barely visible fuzzy band, rather than a spectacularly convoluted interlacing of bright and dark clouds such as we see in long exposure photographs. A nebula like the one in the photo you have linked above would look much the same as the Milky Way as seen by the naked eye, or dimmer, if we were close to it.

But it might look quite different when seen through the eyes of a lemur, a rabbit-eared bandicoot or other nocturnal creature. Like looking at the sky through military night-vision or infrared goggles.

Answer 4

with your own eyes? they would see nothing because that is a picture of the pillars of creation, which you cant see from earth.

and if you were somehow right next to them then yes, they would look like that. the colors in space are usually do to supernovae. most of the cool pictures are of nebula, which are just the remains of a massive star. so their composed of mainly the first 25 elements and some others. which is why they look cool, 25 different colored elements all floating together.

that picture would look the same if you saw it with your own eyes, from a close distance.

Answer 5

All nebulae, and just about everything else you view through a telescope without filters or by naked eye, are just varying shades of grey.

Answer 6

It would look dim and gray, and could easily be mistaken for atmospherics, or a contaminated lens; unless you were specifically looking for it. Photography allows you to capture enough light over time to make these very dim objects appear brilliant; it also allows you to use red,blue, and green filters to collect spectrums of lights which can be combined to produce a color photo. It takes alot of light for the human eye to percieve color; which is why we sometimes find ourselves wearing different color socks.

Answer 7

a atlas or a map is a representation of a around (3-d) physique on a flat (2d) floor. in case you peel an orange, and attempt to flatten the exterior, some areas in the midsection will compress at the same time as the exterior would be stretched. i think of a globe is the ultimate thank you to choose the dimensions of a land mass.

Answer 8

Hi. Usually just a fuzzy patch. Exciting to find if you understand what you are seeing.