Image courtesy: Ars Electronica Center - Linz , Prof. Dr. Siegi Priglinger , Google images , wikipedia

Ultimately, when we look at the night sky with our eyes, we only see little pinpricks of light, which are generally barely discernible admidst the blackness of space. It is almost impossible to tell whether one dot is ore red or blue. Rather, they all look like identical, tiny flashes. However, when we look with a telescope, the sky comes alive.

Yet, as these pictures demonstrate, what we see alters greatly depending on the conditions.

These pictures show how different astronomical images can appear depending on the type of telescope being used to observe the object, and how they may vary based on all the various physical issues that come into play when one is calibrating the optical system. Ultimately, in each of the images, the photographer captured what they believed was the “true” color of the object. And as you can probably tell by looking at these various depictions, the results are quite different. It just goes to show how individuals may interpret data differently, and how each astronomy image is, in many ways, an individual work of art.


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