Are the photos from　the hubble telescope as they are or enhanced and if enhanced is it a big ***** con?

Question

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Most-Emailed-Photos/ss/1756;_ylt=AvBstqRiSjUnhCZ1uvWb3Hhd8ccF#photoViewer=/080813/ids_photos_sp/r1349723601.jpg

Answer 1

The purpose is not to take pretty pictures for calenders, it's to take pictures that show details of structure and features to learn things.  This often involves taking pictures that do not look the way they would to your eyeball.  This is normal for all astrophotography.

Answer 2

I agree with the other guys.  The Hubble Telescope is not a digital camera.   A digital camera is designed to mimic human vision by seeing the same colors and so on.  The Hubble Telescope is a scientific tool.  It's designed to gather information.  Rather than limitting itself to human capability (such as visible light), it is as thorough as possible.  

Answer 3

it depends on how you look at it.... if you had always assumed it was just taking snap shots, i can see how you could think you were decieved/conned....

but hubble has never claimed to take snap-shot photos..... the colors (never the shapes) are enhanced for both asthetic purposes, and to better study cosmic bodies.  

Answer 4

Yes they are enhanced.  But its not a con.  Enhancement is a useful tool that leads to better and more complete study of the object.  

It similar to enhancement of a digital photo to see something that is otherwise unclear.  Think of digital enhancement of satellite images of a nuclear facility in Iran.  More useful information can be uncovered.  Think of an infrared image of something.  We can't see infrared but we can create a "false-color" image of the object that allows us to "see" it and uncover new information.

Answer 5

yes.  no.

They often see in narrrow bands or non visible light. Some modifications are made to increase contrast. Ameteurs do these things too. It's considered normal and expected.

Answer 6

the HST gathers images in multiples of varying spectral ranges.

these 'raw' images are downloaded via TDRS where they are processed

and enhanced into the images found on websites etc.

there is no 'con' to these images.

www.hubblesite.org  has all the info you can use

Answer 7

The photos taken by Hubble are black and white, colour is added and many small areas of the cosmos are tied together to make composite prints. It is not a con.  

Answer 8

As has already been said - yes and no

We don;t take a single image with all colors included. We take an image in a certain shade of red and a certain shade of green etc and then put them together.

The colors are real - but the colors are also indicative of what atoms/atoms are in the gas (a bit like the different gases that make different colored "neon" lights. So we want to see just that color.

As for being enhanced.

If you look at this image:

http://www.freewebs.com/jezstar/350px-He...

the colors are real. The blue is Helium the red at the outside in nitrogen and the yellow is actually a mixture an red and green with the green coming from oxygen.

If you were to look at this nebula with your eye and no filters it would not look like this because hydrogen is much more abundant than the other elements and tends to emit red light. So the red light from hydrogen washes out (overwhelms) all the other colors.

But to understand this object we want to see all those colors, so we use filters to look at the individual colors.

As an example of how this all works, also look at http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/helix_aa...

to see what it looks like if you don;t filter out the hydrogen red emission