Of course it’s not a photograph because most of the interesting stuff in space consists of light and gases that humans can’t see. If these images only included the visible spectrum they would be mostly black. That doesn’t make them any less astonishing. Shifting e.g. infrared or X-Ray spectrum into visible wavelengths, which is basically what these “artists” do, just reveals the incredible galactic-scale structures of gases and dust clouds that make up our galaxy. The resolution across so many wavelengths from such a distance is incredible.
This is one of the issues...a lack of explanation as to how and why the images are generated the way that they are.
Easy to say its fake because...well it kind of is. Its not a "photo". Its something else. Most of these beautiful images are altered by artists at NASA. They take the data yes, but there are artists working there to produce many of the images.
Looking forward to the day that we can get clear images of things like this from space. There is tremendous beauty out there to be sure.
What a wild time to be alive.
So many things make me say this now.
https://www.space.com/40018-hubble-space-telescope-artists-video.html
Discussion
My point was just that the comment that it was an artist rendering was true.
So when people say look at these cool pictures from the telescope...its true that its not a real picture from the telescope.
Doesnt take away from the beauty of the image but you could do the same thing here on earth. There are gases and light spectrum that we cant see here as well. In fact, I think that would be a cool image, not sure if anyone has done that. Render an earthly image in a simular fashion.
Space is wild.
That’s the thing though. An artist rendering is where an artist makes something up from scratch based on a description. There is way less creative freedom here. All of the content In the picture was captured by the telescope. It’s literally not an artist rendering. At worst, it’s retouched and color-shifted. You make it seem like these pictures are fake news or something, which is far from the truth.
Also the technique does exist for terrestrial photography. See: https://www.naturettl.com/ultraviolet-light-landscape-macro-photography/
Beautiful.