3 ms·

No, there's none of that. These pictures aren't being used for any kind of science. They're 100% PR pieces, made to look pretty - which is fine!

april_22 4y ago
Which makes me wonder how all these galaxies and nebulas would look like in real life. Would they look similar to how they colored it? Are those images maybe potraying a completely wrong reality?
- Bud 4y ago
  Whose real life? Some of the aliens can see better than us. ;)
- roywiggins 4y ago
  You can see different images of the Horsehead nebula and the differences in how colors are presented. They vary substantially, but not in any way that matters, at least to me on an aesthetic level. It's more like the difference between different white balances (which are, to some extent and in some contexts, arbitrary) in a terrestrial image. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsehead_Nebula https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsehead_Nebula Maybe one or another of them is more "true to life" but since human eyes never evolved to view this stuff, there's no reason to think that the best and most informative view of an astronomical object is the visible light one.
- wthomp 4y ago
  If you were to fly into these nebula in some kind of spaceship they wouldn't be any brighter than they appear in the night sky from Earth. They would just look way way bigger. The frustrating thing is that our eyes start to respond differently to colours when the light is really really faint. So we would probably perceive them as a grayish green haze. If the image was brightened artificiallythen we would see it as mostly red, with some browns and blues.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Depends quite a lot on how you look. If you use an optical telescope to look at the Orion Nebula, you'll see it, but it'll appear pretty much grey. (No scope and it'll be what looks like a bright star, with perhaps a little bit of a blobby nature.) Hook a standard SLR camera up to the telescope and do a long exposure, though, and the reds and blues become readily apparent. Here's one I took with a standard camera and a 6" scope: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMtHMicBwvI/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CMtHMicBwvI/
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  There is no "in real life." The size, sensitivity, and spectral response of human eyes is a response to the radiation conditions on Earth, as enhanced by evolution. If the Sun had been redder or bluer and your eyes were the size of your head or much smaller, everything would look very different. The Webb images are infrared so "in real life" you'd never see them as shown here. You'd see whatever was visible in optical wavelengths. This isn't just a quantitative difference. Those science fiction imagined alien worlds covered in little tiny technological lights - just like Earth - are a fantasy. Aliens might see UV instead of optical frequencies, and Earth would look like Venus to them - an opaque planet covered by a thick haze. They might light their spaces with UV, which we wouldn't be able to see so their planet would look dark to us. And so on.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    You are obviously missing the point. They want to know what it would look like to a human observer.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      It's the wrong question to ask because a 'human observer' would see absolutely nothing. The age of the objects you are looking at is such that you are looking into the past not at something the is still there in the present, so if we were to transport you there you would not recognize the various objects in visible light at all, too much time has passed. At this level 'distance' = 'time'.
      - s1artibartfast 4y ago
        This isn't true at all, many of the objects are not far away. The Carina Nebula (imaged) is 7,500 light years away. It is still there. It seems like people are going through mental gymnastics to avoid answering the question. If someone asked what a famous black and white photo like raising the flag would look like in person, would people give the same nonsense answers? e.g. "There is no "in real life", "the past cant be seen" For the Carina Nebula[2] : "Several filters were used to sample narrow and broad wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: Red: F444W, Orange: F335M, Yellow: F470N, Green: F200W, Cyan: F187N, Blue: F090W" This is in comparison to the human eye, which sees 630 nm for red, 532 nm for green, and 465 nm for blue light. That is not to say the Nebula isn't also observable in visible light, you would just be seeing different colors and perhaps features. probably something like this visible spectrum imagine of a different part of the nebula For the other images, what you would see in person ranges from very similar to nothing depending on the image, and pixel in the image. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Flag_on_Iwo_Jima https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Flag_on_Iwo_Jima [2] https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/031/01G77PKB8NKR7S8Z6HBXMYATGJ https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/031/01G... [3] https://esahubble.org/images/heic0910e/ https://esahubble.org/images/heic0910e/
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Responses to this question are really interesting. I usually take these kinds of evasive non answers in bad faith, thinking that people are refusing to acknowledge the validity of the question. After some thought, I wonder if it is more an issue of neurodiversity. Perhaps some people cant imagine themselves viewing a celestial object, or can't imagine the desire to do so.
ghostpepper 4y ago
I like to think that these cosmological structures are inherently beautiful the same way abstract mathematics is, and colorizing it is just a way to convey a sense of that beauty to most people who don't speak the language.
creatonez 4y ago
These are Webb's first science images, so published papers will come out of them. Of course, those papers will have additional data and analysis to go alongside it, but they absolutely are looking at details resolved in these specific images, processed in this specific way. So I'm not sure where the sentiment that these are just images for the public is coming from. That's certainly part of why these observations were made and processed this way, but there is science too.
- throwaway09223 4y ago
  "but they absolutely are looking at details resolved in these specific images, processed in this specific way." I don't think you're correct. PR images from telescopes aren't new, so if you are correct then surely you'll be able to find papers based on older photoshopped images from Hubble. Are you able to find any?
  - creatonez 4y ago
    There are countless examples. The reason they composite the sensor layers in the first place is because they are trying to color code gases and dust for use by scientists. In some cases they are trying to highlight features that would be too dim otherwise. Here is an example of color-coded images from Hubble being used - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/345911/pdf https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/345911/pdf - The same beautiful image used to get the public excited about space is used in Fig2 to locate where helium, nitrogen, and oxygen are in a planetary nebula. Even the 'Pillars of Creation' image was used for this sort of analysis, though it was less interesting than most images. "Beautiful" just happens to overlap with "highest contrast and most useful for study". JWST has more sensors than ever before, so it will be more colorful than ever before.

april_22 4y ago

Which makes me wonder how all these galaxies and nebulas would look like in real life. Would they look similar to how they colored it? Are those images maybe potraying a completely wrong reality?

Bud 4y ago
Whose real life? Some of the aliens can see better than us. ;)
roywiggins 4y ago
You can see different images of the Horsehead nebula and the differences in how colors are presented. They vary substantially, but not in any way that matters, at least to me on an aesthetic level. It's more like the difference between different white balances (which are, to some extent and in some contexts, arbitrary) in a terrestrial image. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsehead_Nebula https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsehead_Nebula Maybe one or another of them is more "true to life" but since human eyes never evolved to view this stuff, there's no reason to think that the best and most informative view of an astronomical object is the visible light one.
wthomp 4y ago
If you were to fly into these nebula in some kind of spaceship they wouldn't be any brighter than they appear in the night sky from Earth. They would just look way way bigger. The frustrating thing is that our eyes start to respond differently to colours when the light is really really faint. So we would probably perceive them as a grayish green haze. If the image was brightened artificiallythen we would see it as mostly red, with some browns and blues.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ceejayoz 4y ago
Depends quite a lot on how you look. If you use an optical telescope to look at the Orion Nebula, you'll see it, but it'll appear pretty much grey. (No scope and it'll be what looks like a bright star, with perhaps a little bit of a blobby nature.) Hook a standard SLR camera up to the telescope and do a long exposure, though, and the reds and blues become readily apparent. Here's one I took with a standard camera and a 6" scope: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMtHMicBwvI/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CMtHMicBwvI/
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
There is no "in real life." The size, sensitivity, and spectral response of human eyes is a response to the radiation conditions on Earth, as enhanced by evolution. If the Sun had been redder or bluer and your eyes were the size of your head or much smaller, everything would look very different. The Webb images are infrared so "in real life" you'd never see them as shown here. You'd see whatever was visible in optical wavelengths. This isn't just a quantitative difference. Those science fiction imagined alien worlds covered in little tiny technological lights - just like Earth - are a fantasy. Aliens might see UV instead of optical frequencies, and Earth would look like Venus to them - an opaque planet covered by a thick haze. They might light their spaces with UV, which we wouldn't be able to see so their planet would look dark to us. And so on.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  You are obviously missing the point. They want to know what it would look like to a human observer.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    It's the wrong question to ask because a 'human observer' would see absolutely nothing. The age of the objects you are looking at is such that you are looking into the past not at something the is still there in the present, so if we were to transport you there you would not recognize the various objects in visible light at all, too much time has passed. At this level 'distance' = 'time'.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      This isn't true at all, many of the objects are not far away. The Carina Nebula (imaged) is 7,500 light years away. It is still there. It seems like people are going through mental gymnastics to avoid answering the question. If someone asked what a famous black and white photo like raising the flag would look like in person, would people give the same nonsense answers? e.g. "There is no "in real life", "the past cant be seen" For the Carina Nebula[2] : "Several filters were used to sample narrow and broad wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: Red: F444W, Orange: F335M, Yellow: F470N, Green: F200W, Cyan: F187N, Blue: F090W" This is in comparison to the human eye, which sees 630 nm for red, 532 nm for green, and 465 nm for blue light. That is not to say the Nebula isn't also observable in visible light, you would just be seeing different colors and perhaps features. probably something like this visible spectrum imagine of a different part of the nebula For the other images, what you would see in person ranges from very similar to nothing depending on the image, and pixel in the image. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Flag_on_Iwo_Jima https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Flag_on_Iwo_Jima [2] https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/031/01G77PKB8NKR7S8Z6HBXMYATGJ https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/031/01G... [3] https://esahubble.org/images/heic0910e/ https://esahubble.org/images/heic0910e/
s1artibartfast 4y ago
Responses to this question are really interesting. I usually take these kinds of evasive non answers in bad faith, thinking that people are refusing to acknowledge the validity of the question. After some thought, I wonder if it is more an issue of neurodiversity. Perhaps some people cant imagine themselves viewing a celestial object, or can't imagine the desire to do so.

ghostpepper 4y ago

I like to think that these cosmological structures are inherently beautiful the same way abstract mathematics is, and colorizing it is just a way to convey a sense of that beauty to most people who don't speak the language.

creatonez 4y ago

These are Webb's first science images, so published papers will come out of them. Of course, those papers will have additional data and analysis to go alongside it, but they absolutely are looking at details resolved in these specific images, processed in this specific way. So I'm not sure where the sentiment that these are just images for the public is coming from. That's certainly part of why these observations were made and processed this way, but there is science too.

throwaway09223 4y ago
"but they absolutely are looking at details resolved in these specific images, processed in this specific way." I don't think you're correct. PR images from telescopes aren't new, so if you are correct then surely you'll be able to find papers based on older photoshopped images from Hubble. Are you able to find any?
- creatonez 4y ago
  There are countless examples. The reason they composite the sensor layers in the first place is because they are trying to color code gases and dust for use by scientists. In some cases they are trying to highlight features that would be too dim otherwise. Here is an example of color-coded images from Hubble being used - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/345911/pdf https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/345911/pdf - The same beautiful image used to get the public excited about space is used in Fig2 to locate where helium, nitrogen, and oxygen are in a planetary nebula. Even the 'Pillars of Creation' image was used for this sort of analysis, though it was less interesting than most images. "Beautiful" just happens to overlap with "highest contrast and most useful for study". JWST has more sensors than ever before, so it will be more colorful than ever before.