The Beauty Of It All..
Inside and outside..
Are Thoses Colors Real?

People who scan the sky with a backyard telescope often feel a sense of disappointment upon first locating a famous galaxy or nebula.

Where are the beautiful colors they have seen in photographs?
" The colors of galaxies cannot be seen directly by the human eye, even through the largest existing telescopes,"
notes astronomer and science writer Timothy Ferris,"
for their light is too faint to stimulate the color receptors of the retina.."

This has caused some persons to conclude that the beautiful colors seen in astronomical photos are fakes,
simply added in the processing somehow. This is not the case, however.
" The colors themselves are real," writes Ferris,"
and the photographs represent the best efforts of astronomers to reproduce them accurately.."

In his book Galaxies, Ferris explains that the photos of faint distant objects,
such as galaxies or most nebula," are time exposures obtained by aiming a
telescope at a galaxy and exposeing a photographic plate for as long as
several hours while starlight seeps into the photographic emulsions..

During this time a driving mechanism compensates for the earth's rotation and keeps the telescope trained on the galaxy,
while the astronomer, or in some cases an automatic guiding system, makes minute corrections."