Space Warps Talk

What's with the blue and green?

  • dracocharky by dracocharky

    I've seen a few images like this now, and I've been wondering what exactly causes the extreme colouring? is is just because the light source is so bright?

    Posted

  • psaha by psaha scientist

    The things with spikes are foreground stars from our own galaxy. The spikes are ghost images of the struts that hold up the telescope mirrors.

    For the colours --- we are seeing a composite of several images taken through different infrared filters and rendered as red-green-blue. Sometimes the component images aren't matched up quite right, and then as you suggested, bright sources give weird-looking results.

    Posted