Universe more bland than thought?: Hubble Photos

[brekin]

Tell me, fellow lover of the truth, are those photos NASA makes and shares presented to the public as being in false color? Do they say, here is a picture of such and such nebula, if you could see along the invisible spectrum? No, they don't. They dance around and sani-scientize the process here and there in the back pages of the internet. So what kind of conspiracy is that? Well, it is basically a pretty lame lazy one that millions have fallen for.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2013/12/image/a/

In this new Hubble Space Telescope view, the nebula appears in a new light, as seen in infrared wavelengths. The nebula, shadowy in optical light, appears transparent and ethereal when seen in the infrared, represented here with visible shades. The rich tapestry of the Horsehead Nebula pops out against the backdrop of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies that are easily seen in infrared light.

meh, i had enough arguing with you about this, go be ignorant

Whatever space fantasy apologist, you know they push these photos everywhere and the majority of people view and accept them as images of how a human would normally perceive them. Have you read any of the dozen above articles laying out the publics perceived perception of these photos and the scientific communities and NASA's uneasy relationship with the intentions of processing of them? Why does simply asking "Are these photos realistic?" seem to generate massive geek um and awwing? Sorry that maligning NASA and their spectral tendencies as made you go jealous boyfriend, did you go to space camp or something?

The public thinks, in general, the photos we are seeing are how Wesley Crusher would see them, not Laforge.
You don't think that isn't wack?

[smoking since 1879]

Tell me, fellow lover of the truth, are those photos NASA makes and shares presented to the public as being in false color? Do they say, here is a picture of such and such nebula, if you could see along the invisible spectrum? No, they don't. They dance around and sani-scientize the process here and there in the back pages of the internet. So what kind of conspiracy is that? Well, it is basically a pretty lame lazy one that millions have fallen for.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2013/12/image/a/

In this new Hubble Space Telescope view, the nebula appears in a new light, as seen in infrared wavelengths. The nebula, shadowy in optical light, appears transparent and ethereal when seen in the infrared, represented here with visible shades. The rich tapestry of the Horsehead Nebula pops out against the backdrop of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies that are easily seen in infrared light.

meh, i had enough arguing with you about this, go be ignorant

Whatever space fantasy apologist, you know they push these photos everywhere and the majority of people view and accept them as images of how a human would normally perceive them. Have you read any of the dozen above articles laying out the publics perceived perception of these photos and the scientific communities and NASA's uneasy relationship with the intentions of processing of them? Why does simply asking "Are these photos realistic?" seem to generate massive geek um and awwing? Sorry that maligning NASA and their spectral tendencies as made you go jealous boyfriend, did you go to space camp or something?

The public thinks, in general, the photos we are seeing are how Wesley Crusher would see them, not Laforge.
You don't think that isn't wack?

why's that chap got a hairband over his eyes?

[brekin]

Tell me, fellow lover of the truth, are those photos NASA makes and shares presented to the public as being in false color? Do they say, here is a picture of such and such nebula, if you could see along the invisible spectrum? No, they don't. They dance around and sani-scientize the process here and there in the back pages of the internet. So what kind of conspiracy is that? Well, it is basically a pretty lame lazy one that millions have fallen for.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2013/12/image/a/

In this new Hubble Space Telescope view, the nebula appears in a new light, as seen in infrared wavelengths. The nebula, shadowy in optical light, appears transparent and ethereal when seen in the infrared, represented here with visible shades. The rich tapestry of the Horsehead Nebula pops out against the backdrop of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies that are easily seen in infrared light.

meh, i had enough arguing with you about this, go be ignorant

Whatever space fantasy apologist, you know they push these photos everywhere and the majority of people view and accept them as images of how a human would normally perceive them. Have you read any of the dozen above articles laying out the publics perceived perception of these photos and the scientific communities and NASA's uneasy relationship with the intentions of processing of them? Why does simply asking "Are these photos realistic?" seem to generate massive geek um and awwing? Sorry that maligning NASA and their spectral tendencies as made you go jealous boyfriend, did you go to space camp or something?

The public thinks, in general, the photos we are seeing are how Wesley Crusher would see them, not Laforge.
You don't think that isn't wack?

why's that chap got a hairband over his eyes?

So, he can honestly say that the images NASA publishes of space objects are the way a human sees them.
And apologies, if you don't know who Laforge is, you obviously didn't go to Space camp.

[82_28]

Everyone knows it's the Reading Rainbow he's looking through.

[Pele'sDaughter]

I'm much more disturbed by the fact that people are unaware that our human vision is limited to certain spectrums. I was a tomboy who loved to play outside, but I also spent many hours reading National Geographic and pouring over our set of World Book Encyclopedia. I learned these things outside of school and don't remember when or if that was covered in any science class I took. Surely, though, I shouldn't be stunned that people so easily take everything at face value without question.

[Saurian Tail]

The general public does not understand how astrophotography works and can be forgiven for thinking that the images that are presented are what they might actually see with their own eyes. There is a ton of color in space but our eyes have a very fast "refresh" rate and a very tiny aperture (only 7 mm under a very dark sky). The visual image of deep sky objects (galaxies, nebulas, etc) in a telescope is generally a pale grey/white or very pale green as those are the colors our night vision is most sensitive too. On some brighter objects, you will catch a hint of pink or blue ... but not much. Planets and stars are comparatively bright and can show quite a bit of color as you can see even with the unaided eye.

Digital images are not "fake" or a misrepresentation per se ... it is just a different (better for this application) technology than using film (there are a myriad of reasons). Many of the objects are exceedingly faint and using digital processing allows extremely fine detail to be drawn out of the background noise.

Not all that long ago all astrophotography was done with film ... here are some scans of beautiful film photos by Jerry Lodriguss from way back in the 90's (LOL!).

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/SHOWCASE/SHOWCASE.HTM







*** edited 1 time to fix links ***

[brekin]

I'm much more disturbed by the fact that people are unaware that our human vision is limited to certain spectrums. I was a tomboy who loved to play outside, but I also spent many hours reading National Geographic and pouring over our set of World Book Encyclopedia. I learned these things outside of school and don't remember when or if that was covered in any science class I took. Surely, though, I shouldn't be stunned that people so easily take everything at face value without question.

Putting aside precocious snowflakes for a moment, don't you think the general run of people should be safe in assuming that photos of astronomical objects from a scientific body being released to the general public, are by default, being presented in the vision spectrum native to human beings? Or should we approach a photo of the Eagle Nebula the same way we do a magazine cover of Kim Kardashian's booty?

[Saurian Tail]

... don't you think the general run of people should be safe in assuming that photos of astronomical objects from a scientific body being released to the general public, are by default, being presented in the vision spectrum native to human beings?

No. The whole purpose of a telescope is to show more than is visible to the human eye. Below are some digital photos from my local astronomy club taken with an 11" telescope. As you can see, the difference between this amateur equipment and NASA is a matter of having access to better equipment. There is no fundamental difference in the taking and processing of the images.

http://www.pbase.com/skybox

[brekin]

... don't you think the general run of people should be safe in assuming that photos of astronomical objects from a scientific body being released to the general public, are by default, being presented in the vision spectrum native to human beings?

No. The whole purpose of a telescope is to show more than is visible to the human eye. Below are some digital photos from my local astronomy club taken with an 11" telescope. As you can see, the difference between this amateur equipment and NASA is a matter of having access to better equipment. There is no fundamental difference in the taking and processing of the images.

Whatever, have you read any of the above articles? The purpose of a telescope is to show distant images nearer, and that is how it has been for centuries. It is great that we have technology that can pick up and now image, make visible, radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet, etc but what your digital camera does automatically (by default! unless you've fiddled with the settings) is capture and present the image as accurately, in general, in true color, not false color. NASA does that manually, capturing images in different spectrums and then creating a composite later, more or less into true or false color based on varying criteria (some of it obviously for scientific research but for the public consumption some of it seemingly squishy and dubious). I doubt your local astronomy club does by hand what NASA does above?

Instead of a distant star, lets say your local astronomy club decided to get some stills of me across town. The crew rolls up in all its glory, runs up to one of your parents attics to operate your Hubble Jr., You zoom in on me and get a nice montage of me in all my sweat drenched pasty glory as I am P90X'ing. Now by default, in true color, say I'm tipping into the Boo Radley pigmentation range. But that isn't really showing the deep non existent crevices of my abs, so someone says lets capture some in infrared, and you get some of me in infrared that tease out a wee bit those elusive deep caverns of ripped abs, but also has thrown me into the George Hamilton tan pigmentation range.

Now I get for the purpose of detailing my abs you'd want to go with the more infrared one, say if you wanted to land a probe in there. But to show someone who has never seen me before, as accurately as a human would see me, which one would you say is more accurately a representative of me? Do you think they would be a wee bit surprised if when they run into me in the future I don't have the tone of oiled corinthian leather skin but more albino dolphin belly? And why stop there, what if the image of me that is a combination of thermal imaging, ultraviolet, blue light, etc is "true" with no "detail added" but the normally invisible streamers give me a cool Dr. Strange aura that would sell more calendars is the one you decide to show?


Why does everyone want to see my abs?

Edited to Add: Looking at your site is actually very educational and is helpful to me, at least, to see some of the processing other people do and the software they use. I'm still not completely convinced that NASA isn't leaning towards prettiest in show for public released photos though, but I'd be interested to see other before and after processing examples from others so thanks for the examples.

[Saurian Tail]

Hi Brekin ... yes, they are doing pretty much exactly what NASA is doing in the videos and articles you posted above. I understand why folks might get alarmed when exposed to how digital image processing works if they don't have a good point of reference on the topic. And I'm grateful that you took the time to look at the links on my other post.

It goes without saying that NASA picks the best of the best images and processes the heck out of them for the obvious publicity that the photos bring to them. (I'm sure the actual science that gets done on a daily basis is exceedingly boring!) The reason that I posted both film and digital images above was to show that digital imaging color is not randomly assigned ... both film and digital images look very much the same at the macro level. Digital images allows very fine tuning to bring out the subtle detail that goes uncaptured in the film images. The mistake is in thinking that any astrophotography of any sort results in an image that is "as it would appear to the human eye". The eye system and the camera/telescope system are two totally different kinds of recording devices.

Here is a good article about digital imaging on the Sky and Telescope website: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/astrophotography-tips/the-abcs-of-ccd-imaging/

The Northern Virginia Astronomy Club (I was a NOVAC board member about 15 years ago) has nearly 1000 images posted online taken by club members: http://www.novac.com/wp/observing/member-images/

There are almost 20K images on the Amateur Astro-Photography flickr page (most have equipment and processing details): https://www.flickr.com/groups/2425230@N20/pool/with/26323626153/

Google "CCD Amateur astrophotography" and browse the links to see people's scope set-ups and images. YouTube "CCD astronomy image processing" and enjoy thousands of technical videos of how people process the images. I'm kidding about the enjoy part ... they are pretty boring

Here is one company (of many) that sells CCD cameras to advanced amateurs: https://www.sbig.com/

This link has a list of products for Camera Control; Focus Control; Image Acquisition Control; Image Calibration, Aligning and Stacking; Image Correction and Enhancement; Telescope Autoguiding; and other software utilities and imaging tools: http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/SOFTWARE.HTM

I hope all of that is useful.

-ST

[brekin]

Hi Brekin ... yes, they are doing pretty much exactly what NASA is doing in the videos and articles you posted above. I understand why folks might get alarmed when exposed to how digital image processing works if they don't have a good point of reference on the topic. And I'm grateful that you took the time to look at the links on my other post.

It goes without saying that NASA picks the best of the best images and processes the heck out of them for the obvious publicity that the photos bring to them. (I'm sure the actual science that gets done on a daily basis is exceedingly boring!) The reason that I posted both film and digital images above was to show that digital imaging color is not randomly assigned ... both film and digital images look very much the same at the macro level. Digital images allows very fine tuning to bring out the subtle detail that goes uncaptured in the film images. The mistake is in thinking that any astrophotography of any sort results in an image that is "as it would appear to the human eye". The eye system and the camera/telescope system are two totally different kinds of recording devices.

Here is a good article about digital imaging on the Sky and Telescope website: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/astrophotography-tips/the-abcs-of-ccd-imaging/

The Northern Virginia Astronomy Club (I was a NOVAC board member about 15 years ago) has nearly 1000 images posted online taken by club members: http://www.novac.com/wp/observing/member-images/

There are almost 20K images on the Amateur Astro-Photography flickr page (most have equipment and processing details): https://www.flickr.com/groups/2425230@N20/pool/with/26323626153/

Google "CCD Amateur astrophotography" and browse the links to see people's scope set-ups and images. YouTube "CCD astronomy image processing" and enjoy thousands of technical videos of how people process the images. I'm kidding about the enjoy part ... they are pretty boring

Here is one company (of many) that sells CCD cameras to advanced amateurs: https://www.sbig.com/

This link has a list of products for Camera Control; Focus Control; Image Acquisition Control; Image Calibration, Aligning and Stacking; Image Correction and Enhancement; Telescope Autoguiding; and other software utilities and imaging tools: http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/SOFTWARE.HTM

I hope all of that is useful.

-ST

Thanks that is helpful and does give me a sense of the scales of processing a bit more. I know some of this may seem like a boring open secret to the initiated but to joe blow it just smells funny. I'm only a part time crank but it did pull me into the process/issue and lack of transparency (yuk, yuk) to anything definitive regarding what you see is what you "normally" get. Will have to peruse the links more when I get the chance, thanks again.

[Wombaticus Rex]

don't you think the general run of people should be safe in assuming

Doesn't matter how that sentence ends, really: the answer is Fuck No.

Because, in reality, you're not safe to assume, walking around with unchecked assumptions is not a safe activity.

[brekin]

don't you think the general run of people should be safe in assuming

Doesn't matter how that sentence ends, really: the answer is Fuck No.
Because, in reality, you're not safe to assume, walking around with unchecked assumptions is not a safe activity.

I know that rhetoric feeds into everything we do here, and even massages our egos somewhat in believing we do, but the reality is we are all second-third-fourth to the 10th power handers with basically all our assumptions. We are all reliant on assumptions that we have neither the time, interest nor ability to question. Below are just a few unchecked assumptions the majority of us today literally risked our very lives on, which went unchecked without a moments hesitation, where we simply assumed that what was being portrayed by a governmental body reflected the given reality.



Striking the ever vigilant pose assumes that we can individually check our assumptions effectively, when are all assumptive machinery has been made and transferred to us by others. And as you know questioning a paradigm usually just means trading one set of assumptions for another and I'm all for perpetual questioning and checking up, but a lot of this plays into (as some other comments have shown) "The people who don't sleep with both eyes open deserved to be played." When the reality is we all go to sleep from time to time.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Striking the ever vigilant pose assumes that we can individually check our assumptions effectively, when are all assumptive machinery has been made and transferred to us by others.

I don't think so; indeed, I personally assume we cannot do that due to temporal and sensory constraints.

I'm not saying I have a solution, I'm not even saying a solution is possible. Just pointing out the facts of our condition.

[smoking since 1879]

don't you think the general run of people should be safe in assuming

Doesn't matter how that sentence ends, really: the answer is Fuck No.
Because, in reality, you're not safe to assume, walking around with unchecked assumptions is not a safe activity.

I know that rhetoric feeds into everything we do here, and even massages our egos somewhat in believing we do, but the reality is we are all second-third-fourth to the 10th power handers with basically all our assumptions. We are all reliant on assumptions that we have neither the time, interest nor ability to question. Below are just a few unchecked assumptions the majority of us today literally risked our very lives on, which went unchecked without a moments hesitation, where we simply assumed that what was being portrayed by a governmental body reflected the given reality.



Striking the ever vigilant pose assumes that we can individually check our assumptions effectively, when are all assumptive machinery has been made and transferred to us by others. And as you know questioning a paradigm usually just means trading one set of assumptions for another and I'm all for perpetual questioning and checking up, but a lot of this plays into (as some other comments have shown) "The people who don't sleep with both eyes open deserved to be played." When the reality is we all go to sleep from time to time.

i'll see your image and raise you this: