Shimon
Platinum Member
riptides said:Not only are the colors real, that happened millions of light years ago.
Actually, the colors are not technically real since Hubble only takes pictures in greayscale. The colors are added but they try to represent them accurately.
From the Hubble site:
There are no "natural color" cameras aboard the Hubble and never have been. The optical cameras on board have all been digital CCD cameras, which take images as grayscale pixels.
Sometimes the color is as natural as possible. However, the color given to the images is not just "artistic embellishment." The images are, indeed, downloaded as black and white, and color is added for a number of different reasons – for example, to show the dispersion detail of chemical elements and highlight features so subdued that the human eye cannot see them.
And here is more information for the curious: link.