Are Hubble Images real ?
Hubble images can be either real or false colour depending on what the aim of getting that image was. It is common to colour images to highlight particular features or radiation wavelengths. Most are taken in true colour. The colour only shows up as a result of very long exposures, however. It is really there, but the nebulae are so faint that even if we look at them through a telescope with our own eyes, there is so little light coming from them that the colour receptors of the eye can’t register it. We can see only a faint grey cloud. That the colour is really there, however, can be verified by photographing them with long exposures on film. And finally, going closer to a nebula actually makes them even less visible. They are very tenuous clouds of gas, only visible to us because they are so far away. The closer we get the more dispersed they are across our field of view, and the less we see of them. It’s like clouds in the sky: they seem big and thick and fluffy from down here, but
