Are the colors of astronomical colors?
In the galaxies, stars, planets and other colorful photos, what you see is not necessarily what you get
Lynds 483’s colorful view, two central protestar formation of centric protestars and exits. James Webb Space Telescopes (JWST) caught, this image uses fake colors to highlight certain structural details. Lynds 483 is too wide access from Jwst’s perspective, so it is partially cut in this image.
When I give the public to talk about space and show the last fascinating images Hubble Space Telescope or James Webb Space Telescope (Jwst), is one of the most common questions I get, “That is these objects really resemble? “It’s usually what it means: If you witnessed your eyes, what would you see?
The answer is almost always. But it’s not the astronomers are proving photos! The camera (especially in telescopes) and eye balloons work in very different ways. No photos, including those you take on your phone, can repeat what your eyes can see perfectly. It is what our technology can do approximate What you see and sometimes we don’t want to do that.
Two types of cells on your retales, called Rods and conesThey are the basis of human vision. The rod cannot detect color, but light levels are good to register (Therefore, the weak lights of most stars are white). The cones are cells that decrypt colors, and are three types: each cone is a red, green or blue light. The colors we perceive when we look at an object come from the mixture of the cones perceived. It is a more complicated process than what they have just described, of course, but that is gist.
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Some digital cameras can imitate this view. Instead of being sensitive biological cells, they have two small pixels, which basically play all the photons and those that keep that number electronically. In this system, the brighter object, which emits more light, has a larger number of photons than a dimension of objects.
These pixels are not able to distinguish colors in itself. They just see and record a photon. For information about color, each pixel can cover a file that leaves only a range of colors on the red, green or blue color of the spectrum. The image of the color is created after the raw pixel photons, sorting and summarizing the specific colors of the detected light.
It is called a three-colored image, and it is close to what the eye sees. Astronomical cameras usually use larger red, green and blue filters than in the field of view Small filters The smartphone camera uses for individual pixels, but the end result is the same. In both cases, however, the color filters cannot join the response of your eye color, so the image is not just What you see. However, it can be very close.
Creating a nice photo is good enough, that is, if we are trying to take a picture that matches the eyes. We call such images “real color”, although technically mischievous, it is approximately.
Are images of cosmic objects beautiful (And he loves a lot of people), but the use of real scientific research is limited. In fact, astronomers generally prefer to study any colored images individually than to make a three-color photo.
That’s because there is much more “color” than doing nice pictures. Sun It emits light in a wide range of wavelengths-What we call it a constant spectrum and said, say, we reflect a blossom, which is a mixture of light wavelengths, which perceives us as colors. Most stars also give a continuous spectrum, but do not do all the astronomical objects.
Hydrogen in a gas cloud, for example, transmits very specific wavelengths, mostly most of the 656 nanometers (red part of the spectrum). Emissions like this creates the one called line spectrum. If the astronomers want to know where it is in that nebula, they use the “narrow band” to reach a detector that only passes this specific wavelength of light waves. These filters can be tuned, regardless of the numbers of atoms and molecules that could be in a cloud. enabling cloud composition, temperature, density, structure and other properties to be measured.
Most nebula photos use combinations of these narrow filters, so the images look very different if you are physically floating. The image process is different, so images explore different. And it’s ok! Astronomers don’t try to deceive anyone else. These objects are clearly seen that they are clearly clearly clear, they evolved to perceive our eyes, but we still want see Them. So we create these types of images to do this.
I’ve never done a good name for this process. “False color” was known for a while, but it fell for the sake because it has no phase. “Natural color” is worse. However, the technique deserves the designation, however, allows us to become a variety of light images. Some camera detectors are sensitive to infrared lightNot only detectors in Jwst But even more of the newer smartphones. Others may receive ultraviolet lights, x-rays and other types of lights.
This allows you to create images with a light mixture during the electromagnetic spectrum. For example, you can make a picture shown as red light ultraviolet as red and impressive. Satellite images represent this; Vegetation is a great infrared light reflectionSo it looks bright red in such images, instead of green green, your eyes see. The astronomical images also contain even more color, such as many hubble images, such as five filters, and then the five filters assigned to the corresponding colors are used. This The images obtained is particularly intenseAlthough not, at least the eyes are worried, in the actual color.
In the end, the way you create a photo depends on its use. Sometimes, astronomers use simple filters, multiple or none, according to what they are measuring. And images that you see from the telescopes around the world can be created in any way in the world, then balanced and are very processed to improve its natural beauty.
You can make the case none Of these they are in real color. But again, they have it again were They could not otherwise reveal the true nature of objects that reflect or reflect different types of invisible light. In that sense, they are all The truth!
