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Warning: That viral photo of the Andromeda galaxy might not be real colors
I saw this amazing shot of Andromeda on Instagram and commented about how beautiful the pink and blue gas clouds were. Then someone replied saying those colors are totally fake, just artistic interpretation. I looked into it and apparently most deep sky photos use filters that assign colors to specific gases, like sulfur gets mapped to red even though it's actually a different wavelength. It really surprised me because I always thought those Hubble shots were accurate to what you'd see if you flew out there. But then again, isn't the whole point of astrophotography to make the invisible visible? Some people say false color is misleading for beginners, while others argue it's the only way to show details our eyes can't see. Where do you draw the line between artistic license and scientific accuracy in a photo?
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lisab324d ago
Start by asking why everyone gets so worked up about fake colors. It's a photo of a galaxy, not a news report. You click on a space picture to see something cool, not to study for a test. The pink and blue look great on Instagram and that's basically the whole point. If you really want to know what Andromeda looks like to the naked eye, go find a dark field and squint at a fuzzy blob. Nobody's being tricked into buying a fake product here.
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milalewis2d ago
Oh come on, @lisab32, I get what you're saying but I think you're missing part of it. The issue isn't that people want a boring fuzzy blob, it's that these images get passed around as if they're true representations of space. When you slap "real photo" on a heavily doctored image and it gets shared thousands of times, it creates a fake expectation of what the universe actually looks like. It's like showing someone a car with a perfect paint job and filters instead of what they'd actually see in my shop - it's still cool but it's not the real thing. If space photos are just art, fine, but call them art and stop pretending they're documentary evidence.
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