Four Ways to Identify Astronomy Images

If you’re a fan of astronomy, you’ve probably seen astronomy images, even on Pearl Jam CDs. NASA’s website gets several million hits each day as new images are released. This picture of the Dolphin Head Nebula was captured by Yovin Yahathugoda, using a remote telescope in Chile. The photograph is composed of about 90 minutes of exposure time and three nights of inclement weather. The stars reflected in the water were added to the photo in post-production.

To create astronomy images that are as precise and realistic as possible, astronomers process the raw data from their telescopes. While the processing makes them more accurate, it does not change the reality. People who interact with these images often wonder whether they’re real or not. While it is impossible to prove that an image is authentic, there are ways to determine the source of the picture. Here are four ways to identify if an image is created using a computer or a telescope.

The New Horizons mission was launched in 2006. It reached Pluto in 2015. It captured images that became iconic. The images reveal the surface of Pluto with icy planes, mountains over 11,000 feet tall, and tiny wisps of air in the planet’s atmosphere. Whether it was a heavenly body or a small planet, astronomy images help us understand the vastness of the universe. And when we look at a photograph taken from the spacecraft, we see the immense scale of the universe, not to mention the vast distances and beauty of our planet.

Astronomical images are not only stunning, but also often make for excellent wallpaper. Fortunately, we can now use software like Photoshop to create our own astronomy images. This software lets us combine multiple layers of data and create complex images. This process is useful when combining data from multiple telescopes. In addition to using a computer to produce astronomy images, we can make images that are more realistic than the originals. Using a computer to edit a picture can improve the image’s clarity and save the astronomer time.

Supermassive black holes are also fascinating, and once ridiculed, are now captured on camera. The astronomers behind this image, dubbed the ‘eye of Sauron’, have created a new image that shows a black shadow of the black hole M87* surrounded by glowing gas. In this galaxy’s center, a supermassive black hole sits at its center. This object is more than 55 million suns in mass.

These astronomy images are created by calibrating the data from telescopes. Because telescope cameras don’t see color, the image is presented in grayscale. Every pixel in the image has a numeric value from zero to 255. The higher the number, the brighter and more detailed the image. A grayscale image, on the other hand, is a composite of several grayscale images. This process enables astronomers to make detailed images with a high degree of precision.