Colors In Space

Every weekend I write a post titled “Science Saturday” in which I compile the most interesting science news from the week. Often, the majority of this news comes from the fields of astronomy and space exploration. There are 2 reasons for this; one being that I really like space, and the other being that we’re always learning a lot about space. Space is so huge and interesting, you can hardly look up into the night sky without discovering something new.

Given that I talk about space so much, I should probably clarify something, just so nobody is being misled. It’s in regards to the images of distant objects in space, particularly those that come from the Hubble Space Telescope. Here it is: The colors in these images are all fake.

Alright, “fake” isn’t really a good term for what I’m talking about. But they are artificially assigned to the images as they are compiled from the component photos that Hubble takes. These component photos are actually black and white.

But saying that Hubble is a black and white camera isn’t really correct either. Hubble has the ability to isolate different wavelengths of visible light, (and even some infrared frequencies). This means that while a single photo from Hubble would appear black and white, everything visible in the image is usually representative of a single color. Hubble will then take more images, focusing on different color wavelengths that scientists can then assign corresponding colors to. When these images are compiled, the resulting image will be colored in “natural color” which is likely a close representation of how the subject in space would appear to our eyes. The figure below was taken from Hubble’s web page about this process. It shows how the images from each color spectrum were assigned color and compiled into a single photograph.

For my readers who enjoy looking at Hubble’s photographs, I strongly suggest visiting this web page. It shows more examples like the one above, each with corresponding explanations of natural color assignment.

Natural color assignment isn’t always what we see though. Scientists will often exaggerate certain colors, or assign wacky colors to a certain spectrum to allow particular features to stand out. This isn’t just to mislead the general public about what space looks like. It actually makes it easier to study the photos. This is particularly true when colors are assigned to invisible wavelengths, such as infrared, x-rays, or gamma-rays.

What do you think? Do you feel lied to? Or do you enjoy being able to see space in detail? Let me know in the comments below.