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How NASA Colorizes Hubble Images

Posted by chrisd on from the doing-right-what-turner-did-badly dept.

addie writes "The Ottawa Citizen among others is running a story about how NASA determines what colors to paint their latest Hubble pictures. I'm personally happier looking at a dramatic doctored image, especially when the B&W originals are available."

2 of 18 comments (clear)

  1. Star Wars V : The airbrish stikes back by -douggy · · Score: 3, Funny
    They airbrush my porn

    Now they airbrush my science.

    My life is over

  2. Re:Pseudocolor by Angry+Toad · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you took a spaceship toward the Cone Nebula and you got close enough to see it, it would probably look mostly grey

    Unless of course the pupil of your eye was several kilometers (or maybe just meters?) wide and your retina had a reasonably long exposure time. I suspect that the nebula would then come out in all the psychedelic colors we're used to.

    Since Hubble already extends our eyes into realms that it cannot penetrate naturally, I can't get too worked up about the color alterations. Any Hubble picture already beings with "Pretend your eye is in orbit, is really really big, and has sub-arcsecond resolution..."

    As far as our little monkey eyes go, just about everything in the universe is boring gray.