False Colour Images (APOD 16 Aug 2006)

aabaca · Post by **aabaca** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 1:36 pm

I think that false colour images are extremly beautiful. But, I'm sort of curious as to how the non-processed images appear. Is it possible to see these as well?

Qev · Post by **Qev** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 6:03 pm

In a lot of cases, false-colour images are used because the original images were taken using frequencies that we simply are unable to see. The original images are taken through narrowband filters, and would simply look like black-and-white photographs.

In other cases, the frequencies they're imaging are visible to us, but they chose false colours in order to bring out certain details that they're interested in. But unless they gathered enough data on enough different frequencies of light, they could only really reconstruct an approximation of true colour, since they'd be missing too much information.

aabaca · Post by **aabaca** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 11:24 pm

Cool. When graphics cards were in a state "fast" upgrades, there was talk of seeing some 65 million colours. Well, I wasn't sure I could see 65 million colours and thought 256 colours was just fine. Turns out not. Those other colours besides the basic 256 provide a transition between regions on a photograph that make it look more vivid and three dimensional. I just thought, that the false colour images might be different from what I might see if I could be at a "world" visible distance from the object in question.

Thank you for your time.

NB: I use the term "world" in this way so that objects many thousands of lightyears across could be viewed at a distance so as to incorporate into my world comfortably. (Wherever that world may be set up in spacetime.)