Starship Asterisk*

Because the blue false color palette has greater dynamic range to the eye than other palettes, such as red or heat. Let me offer an alternative explanation. As a false color, orange is almost routinely used to show stars and other "hot objects". Therefore, astronomers may expect the gener...

There were a number of goodies here. I'm impressed. The cosmic zoo in the Large Magellanic Cloud was interesting, but you had to follow the link to see the whole picture and learn more about the wild beasts in there. There is an annotated image that you can find via the link. Don't miss it. Similarl...

I think they should have shown the Pluto picture in orange, since Pluto is an orange-brown world. And while I don't know anything about the color of Nix and Hydra, chances are that the Earth and Neptune are the only blue planetary bodies of this solar system. Why do astronomers have to use the false...

Note the "limb brightening" where you'd expect limb darkening. And the solar prominences are blue. And the Sun is kind of egg-shaped. Fascinating. There is something otherworldly about this Sun. Perhaps it is our Sun's evil twin in an anti-matter universe. Perhaps it is the Sun of Mordor, ...

They didn't image Pluto in blue light? And yet they showed it as blue, even though Pluto is about as non-blue as a planetary body can get??? :facepalm: I don't get it. This is the kind of false color usage that I have no respect for, sorry. It's like when they image the Sun in ultraviolet and show i...

Oh goodie, I love these kinds of polls! Hmmmmm... for me as a galaxy lover, the galaxy fare was unusually unsustaining here, although it was a lot of fun to see a supernova go off! Bravo! The resolution was kind of iffy, though. The Eagle nebula was beautiful, and the color of it was so much better ...

Oh my god!!!! The Kraken! Markus Maximus, I love it!!!!!

Ann

But hah! Art! You have almost convinced me! Who would be the greatest ever authority on the color of the Sun, if not Shakespeare? I bow to your erudition and insight, if not to your sense of color, oh grand master of wisdom and blank verse! :owl: I think I do believe in you and Will, so the Sun must...

It isn't the intent of most scientific astronomical imagers to produce results that show some sort of actual color. The intent is to ascertain what makes up objects, and to see structure. Yes, it is obvious that that is the kind of astronomy that the Hubble telescope usually does. And I don't consi...

As blue as you think it should. What you see is not necessarily what other people see. What you term "true color" is true... to you. Point taken. But do you think, all things considered, that it is a good idea to show the overall stellar populations of NGC 3310 and M 104 as having the sam...

I've just been going on about how I need astro-images to show objects in "true color" for me to appreciate them. And, yeah, yeah, I know that infrared images just can't ever be "true color" (because they depict objects and structures that are colorless in themselves, stupid). Wel...

Maybe your "absolute color sense" makes it difficult for you to separate the two; perhaps this is analogous to someone's with perfect (or absolute) pitch being bothered when singing or playing (early music) at A415 Hz rather than the modern tuning of A440 Hz. Interesting. I think you are ...

Good question, Owlice. To be honest, I'm frustrated about the way that everything is "shifted to the red" in astronomy, and now I'm not talking about what we know as redshift! No, my problem is that blue stars like Vega are described as white (that's a shift to the red), white stars like t...

But as directly viewed from the ground, the Sun is perceptually yellow! You mean, when you stare at the Sun to ascertain its color? :shock: So all these images are actually correct, other than being too saturated. "Too saturated" is only their middle name. I, too, admit that the light of ...

Note, however, that Vegans can only see GREEN. Belatedly: :lol: :lol: :lol: Chris wrote: Sometimes G stars are called yellow stars. In terms of visual appearance, the Sun is white. In terms of stellar classification, it is yellow. Again, I don't see the problem. What's the problem, Chris? Well, the...

Pluto is a planet. Uh-uh, Chris! Are you one of those Harvard guys who get their news in a bottle? http://static-p3.fotolia.com/jpg/00/01/23/78/400_F_1237869_UEbL05TzDNFGnfXY4RyqDjFue18NO3.jpg These are the only ones of which The news has come to Ha'vard And there may be many others But they haven'...

For example, in green plants, the action spectrum resembles the absorption spectrum for chlorophylls and carotenoids with peaks for violet-blue and red light.

So our plants would do even better with the violet-blue light of blue (not white) Vega, then?

Ann

As for Albireo, let me say that when I see that star I don't compare the color of the two components with each other, I compare the yellow component with other yellow stars that I see "in my mind's eye", and the blue component with other blue stars whose color I remember. That is why I was...

By the way, thank you for your Don Quixote and Seinfeld references. I'm not absolutely sure what they meant, but I always appreciate a chance to feel cuturally sophisticated. It so happens that I like Superman too, at least when he spends his days with Lois Lane. (Get that Tom Welling boy away from ...

And yet, I see the pair as strikingly colorful; I'd describe the yellow component as far more saturated than Arcturus, and the blue component as the most blue of any stars I observe. Yes, I realize that most people respond to Albireo the way you do, but I think I have a bit of an "absolute&quo...

Well, there was no way I could not vote for the galaxy group with that little blue rascal bursting with hot new stars and nebulae. I love that stuff, and it gets even better when those starburst galaxies are seen close to an old yellow elliptical. What a contrast. Wow. Okay, but even I have to admit...

I have read a bit of this before, but it is really interesting. Thanks for posting.

Ann

Chris wrote: But the apparent color of a star also depends heavily on the colors of reference stars around it. I don't agree. When I checked out the colors of stars, one of my biggest disappointments was Albireo. I had expected a vividly colorful binary made up of one brashly golden-orange primary a...

Well, hmmm. That "sex days" thing was a little funny, I'll grant you that. :oops: On the other hand: http://www.wikihow.com/Count-in-Swedish As for the colorful graph you posted, it could be that I'm all wrong, but it sure looks to me that even the graph admits that a star whose temperatur...

Again, the important point is that stellar colors are a measure of the emission peak, and not of the apparent color to the eye. Visually the Sun is white; spectrally it is yellow. There is no contradiction here. Are you sure that the Sun isn't green as defined from its spectral peak? I, at least, h...