Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2011 November 16 NGC 7822 in Cepheus Image Credit & Copyright: Manuel Fernández Suarez Explanation: Hot, young stars and cosmic pillars of gas and dust seem to crowd into NGC 7822. At the edge of a giant molecular cloud toward the northern constellation Cepheus, the glowing star forming region lies about 3,000 light-years away. Within the nebula, bright edges and dark shapes are highlighted in this colorful skyscape. The image includes data from narrowband filters, mapping emission from atomic oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur into blue, green, and red hues. The atomic emission is powered by energetic radiation from the hot stars, whose powerful winds and radiation also sculpt and erode the denser pillar shapes. Stars could still be forming inside the pillars by gravitational collapse, but as the pillars are eroded away, any forming stars will ultimately be cutoff from their reservoir of star stuff. This field spans around 40 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 7822. Sorry for the amount of APOD posts I've made here recently, the site has had some tremendous pictures in the last few days that I thought were too good to miss. MelT
"This is our star, just another star in a sea of stars" <--- Only somewhat relevant but, hell yeah I say. Nice post as always.
I wish we could see how vibrant the universe is, instead its all just black .I would love to be in space and see this.
Unfortunately the colours don't really exist like that if you were to float past them in space. Still fucking beautiful though.
The colours aren't completely made up, they are added to represent the different elements, Hydrogen and whatnot in the nebula. In reality though, those colours would be very neutral and quite dull.
So is this a real photograph with some color added, or is it just an artist's portrayal of the nebulas and such? Are there any true color pictures of things like this?
Looks like a very real pic to me, most of them are, the telescopes we use for such things are amazing. Hard to believe we can capture stuff in such detail that is thousands of light years away! And that nebula is 40 light years across, on it's own!! That's pretty big. The vibrant colours in nebula pictures are pretty much always added but while this seems a shame, it is significant. Being able to tell what atoms are present in these stellar nurseries is vital to our understanding of the universe. Nebulae themselves are still beautiful, with or without the colours. ETA: Having said that, space contains some beautiful colours. Check out the Morgan Keenan System for star classification, those bad boys range from Blue to red and everything in between you can even train your naked eye to recognise these colours in stars. Check out Betelguese in Orion, red as a very red thing.
its very common. many pictures of space are printed with visible colors being substituted for things we cant see, like xrays, and infa red rays. like was mentioned also, the colors can represent spectrometry results, so in a sense, we are "seeing" it through outside eyes. we cant actually see it, but our equipment can
Are you saying that if we had eyes that could perceive all bands of the electromagnet spectrum we would see this?
You hit the nail on the head. From how I understand it, the picture is a composite (as another poster basically pointed out. If you saw it in visible light, it would just be cloudy and hazy - mostly whitish. Try looking at the Andromeda galaxy with a telescope. You just see a dull white core and the spiral shape even duller. So yeah, it's real - not photoshopped or an artist didn't add to it. It's just the colors we can't see from many bands all stacked on top on another. Astrophotography is cool.
Makes me wish I could see all the electromagnetic spectrum..I could look up at night an see some stellar shit..
It'd be AWESOME to be able to see all the nebulas in actual color. All the crazy, trippy shapes it would make... like space clouds but with color! Haha. Anyone ever seen an aurora (also known as Nothern Lights)? It's crazy that these colors are actually possible to see via chemical makeup, given the right conditions of them within the atmosphere and lighting effects..
I know, right dude? It's amazing that what we see (visible light) is like not even 10% of the whole spectrum... Let me find that chart... Ahh: It's shit like that ^^^ that fucks my head up... Then I wonder shit like, "Can different animals see things WE can't see?" I know Pigeons can see UV light, which is beyond the blue... My pet rabbit has black eyes. I wonder what HE can see... Damn. Awesome shit!!! I love the EM Spectrum!!!
I have that chart on my fridge. When you see insects going after bright white stuff, they are seeing in UV lucky fuckers.