Overheard a guy at the coffee shop say nebula photos are just 'colored gas'

I was grabbing a late night espresso before my shift and this dude at the next table was telling his friend that all those Hubble shots are fake, just colored gas clouds. Made me think how many people don't know about the ionized hydrogen and sulfur filters we use to pull out those specific wavelengths (like H-alpha). Has anyone else run into this kind of dismissal of astrophotography as 'not real'?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_felix6d ago

Yeah the "colored gas" thing got me too at first. I used to look at those nebula pics and think damn that's some artsy filter work. But then I actually sat down with a buddy who does narrowband imaging and watched him stack Ha and OIII data. Seeing how each filter grabs a specific element's glow at a certain wavelength changed my mind completely. Those colors are real physics not just someone messing with sliders in Photoshop. Like the Pillars of Creation actually are glowing hydrogen and sulfur. Once you understand how the filters map those invisible wavelengths to visible colors it makes total sense.

flores.mark6d ago

Did you ever try shooting with just an Ha filter? It completely changes how you see those images.

the_robin6d ago

Ha, I mean I get that there's real science behind it but do we really need to act like it's that deep? @flores.mark using Ha filters is cool and all but at the end of the day you're still just mapping data to colors someone decided looked good. It's not like you're seeing the actual reds and blues with your eyeballs.