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Hubble image colorization
I saw a story on the news that there is a "Watergate of space science
going on" in that graphics artists are colorizing the images from Hubble to make them more pleasing to the public. Can anyone confirm that story? I would think with spectral data, the colors would be known and no need to make them up. |
#2
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Hubble image colorization
Zbob:
I do NOT work with Hubble images, but rather with images taken of the surface of the Earth by Earth-orbiting satellites. However, I have kicked around a lot of digital images, enhancing them so that the subtle information within the digital data can be made obvious. This is what is done in "remote sensing." From my experience, I assume that Hubble images are "enhanced" for the following reasons: --1-- in each spectral band, the number of grey levels used by the data are too few to show details to the rather insensitive human eye. Thus the data are "stretched" over a larger range of data numbers, e.g., from an original 35-42 to a resulting 0-128. --2-- A series of "grey-level" images, each from a "band" in the em spectrum, are not very informative. Since we humans see color, contrast enhanced grey-scale data can be projected onto a color monitor (or color film) with: --2a-- a different color assignment for each data number. The resulting color image is a "pseudocolor" image. --2b-- a different color filter for each selected band. If the red band is projected through a red filter, green through green, and blue through blue, then the result is a "natural color" image. If an infrared band (light which we can not see) is projected through a red filter, red through a green filter and green through a blue filter, then the result is a "false color" image. Different astronomy sensors can look at very different parts of the em spectrum. Sensors can record such items as the distribution of iron atoms, hydrogen ions, stellar surface temperatures, etc. Thus, the data can be shown only when contrast enhanced and colorized. Computers do not need this, but people do. Fred Zbob wrote: I saw a story on the news that there is a "Watergate of space science going on" in that graphics artists are colorizing the images from Hubble to make them more pleasing to the public. Can anyone confirm that story? I would think with spectral data, the colors would be known and no need to make them up. |
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