Some of the best Hubble telescope photos on its 25th anniversary in space

[Delta4Embassy]

Photos Some of the best Hubble telescope photos on its 25th anniversary in space - San Jose Mercury News

I think space exploration is very important. ..any idea why the shuttle program was shut down? Are we focusing on Mars, maybe?

The orbiter was discontinued, I believe, because as a vehicle designed only to get into orbit it wasn't very effective or safe enough. Could argue the whole program was a PR stunt too. Can put satellites into orbit without a shuttle too afterall. That the Soviets had a shuttle (stole the plans for our's) program too says we kept our's going for national pride moreso than actual need.

 

[rdean]

Oh, I forgot. it's not that they are giving these pictures color, they are actually shifting light into the visible range. Seeing with the naked eye, we will only see dust. The light in our visible range is blocked by dust. Other forms of energy will pass through that dust, X-rays, gamma rays and so one. It's not that they are colorizing all that gray, it's that they are showing us the entire spectrum in light we can actually see.

 

[orogenicman]

Photos Some of the best Hubble telescope photos on its 25th anniversary in space - San Jose Mercury News

What's so great about pictures of 1's and 0's?

Hubble takes pictures which appear as 1's and 0's until a computer assembles them into visual imagery. Telescope itself though isn't taking optical pics. That's all computer.

Hubble images are fake Archive - Cosmoquest Forum

Whether it is a digital photograph or an analogue (film photograph) it is still a photograph. And they are certainly NOT fake by any stretch of the imagination. The cameras take black and white images through various scientific filters, such as ionized hydrogen (known as hydrogen alpha), triply ionized oxygen (OIII), and doubly ionized sulphur (SII). those images are used to produce a false color scientific image using a RGB regime (each filter assigned to the RGB channels). This is called the hubble pallet and gives us information of what objects, such as nebulae dust and gas, are composed.

It's fake at least in how the color versions are colored. The color info isn't in the images Hubble takes and are arbitraily assigned to make the images look pretty. The shapes are true, but the colors aren't.

No sir, they most certainly at NOT arbitrarily assigned. The colors used are very specific. Yes they are false color images. There is no argument there. But the color assignments are not arbitrary. The color information IS in the images Hubble takes. As I've already pointed out, Hubble uses various scientific filters when taking images. These filters capture specific spectra that could not otherwise be captured, not even with normal color film. A hydrogen alpha filter will produce a black and white image of specific spectra that shows features that are not seen in a green filter, for instance, or a blue filter. As an example, the black and white image below was taken using a hydrogen alpha filter attached in front of a dslr camera set for black and white mode:

The same object was imaged using the same camera in color mode as shown below:

When you combine the two images, you get all the faint red emission that rgb color alone cannot see, as shown below: