On Sep 13, 2009, at 6:44 PM, bob_brigante wrote:
> Why are the Images in Black and White?
> The cameras on Hubble are equipped
> with a wide variety of filters that
> allow astronomers to investigate
> celestial objects as they appear over a broad
> range of the electromagnetic spectrum from the
> ultraviolet to the infrared.
******
Maybe someday they'll have the capacity to produce images that are
not B/W, but not false colored either. There's a place for false
color and B/W, but I can look up and see Betelguese's red even
though it's ~640 light years away, and I would like to see accurate
color photography too.
FYI, it's typical in scientific imaging to have data, representing a
certain spectra, represented in a Look Up Table (LUT) corresponding to
a grayscale numbered 0-255 gradations and then later post-processed
into other LUT's to emphasize some specific item. That item, of
course, can also be a way to appreciate images within the rather
limited spectra visible to human beings. It can also be done to render
it artistically appreciable.
The interleaving they're using is a bit more sophisticated then a
simple 256 color LUT, but the same rules apply: you're limited to the
sensors perceiving the subject and are stuck with reproducing these
numbers into some representation of value.
Sorry if that bums some people out, but that's really how it's done.
