Can you explain what you mean by "processed"? Does it mean it actually looks like this, or is this a representation of how it really looks, to a human eye? If I could be in a spaceship a few light years away and I looked out the window - is that what I would see? Cheers - ThreadSky

biglab.bsky.social • 83 days ago

Can you explain what you mean by "processed"? Does it mean it actually looks like this, or is this a representation of how it really looks, to a human eye? If I could be in a spaceship a few light years away and I looked out the window - is that what I would see? Cheers

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mleonenh.bsky.social•83 days ago

1/My best attempt would be to say that Webb doesn't actually send images, but infrared readings in many different channels. That data can be converted to an image and depending on which channels you highlight and what colors you use to represent them, the image resolves to what you see.

mleonenh.bsky.social•83 days ago

2/If you could see in the infrared range, you would probably see "something" that looked like that but not necessarily in the colors that you see here.

I welcome any amplifications or corrections as needed.

yuvharpaz.bsky.social•82 days ago

Yes, I had to transfer the invisible IR frequencies to a combination of reds blues and greens. There is also some rescaling to do, otherwise the bright core is the only visible spot. Besides that there is some cleaning to do, such as fill dead pixels with neighboring values

biglab.bsky.social•82 days ago

What would it look like if I was looking at it though? I've always struggled with this, it seems to my dull mind that these pics aren't....real, that's not the right word. I know real is subjective in terms of how we interpret the spectrum etc, but what would it look like if I actually saw it?

justapeacefuluser.bsky.social•82 days ago

1/2
Since it captures radiation and temperature to create this images,would be common to say you could totally see just the stars in it because the rest could be just gas or other small materials that could be invisible. We are in a similar galaxy from outside POV but we only see black around us

justapeacefuluser.bsky.social•82 days ago

2/2
Is kinda like watching the milky way without seeing the gas the flow around in the middle that would be the green in this photo

mleonenh.bsky.social•82 days ago

Well, I couldn't find an optical image of that particular galaxy but it is a spiral somewhat similar to Andromeda. Here is a picture taken through a telescope of the night sky including Andromeda as an example.

biglab.bsky.social•81 days ago

Thank you!

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