Jakarta –
What color is the night sky actually? If you look at the night sky, even if you use a telescope, the color looks like dark gray. However, why does a photo of the Milky Way galaxy show a colorful night sky studded with stars?
“This is not a problem with the telescope, but with the ability of the human eye to see these colors,” said Alex Thompson from the UK’s National Space Center, quoted from its official website, Saturday (18/3/2023).
The Colors of the Milky Way Galaxy in the Night Sky
The Milky Way Galaxy is a super large spiral galaxy in which the solar system, including the Earth, revolves around the Sun. In Earth’s night sky, the Milky Way galaxy was caught on camera like a round of powdered milk, so it is called the Milky Way.
Milky Way colors are usually bright. The galaxy’s center is bright orange where older stars live, while the rest is bluer with hotter, younger stars.
The Spitzer Space Telescope from the US National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) can capture star nurseries that glow within dark globules.
Photos of stellar nurseries show hundreds of bright blue lights, each of which is a new protostar, an embryonic star, and a young star that has never been seen before.
Differences between Eyes and Telescopes Looking at the Night Sky
However, if you look at the night sky with your naked eye or your own telescope, the sky isn’t that colorful because of the limitations of the human eye.
Thompson explained, the human eye consists of two types of sensor cells, namely cone cells and rods. Stem cells are more sensitive in the dark, but don’t provide the brain with information about color.
Meanwhile, cone cells understand color, but only work in brighter conditions.
Well, telescopes in outer space can capture large amounts of light at once, can focus on one area of space for a long time, and are outside of the distortion caused by Earth’s atmosphere.
“Unfortunately our eyes can’t do any of these things, and even most ground telescopes would have a hard time seeing distant colors,” he said.
Telescope Filters and Added Color to Night Sky Photos
Thompson explained that the space telescope itself would also use different filters to see certain gases and anything outside the visible light spectrum.
Astronomers and scientists can then combine the same image with different filters to create stunning images. The result as seen from the Hubble Space Telescope.
He added that sometimes artificial colors are also added to photos of the night sky. The reasons are various, among others, because often the light is washed out by other colors in the image. Another reason is that the wavelengths are outside the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that humans can see.
Besides that, he continued, researchers also sometimes add color to certain elements in the telescope catches. Its function is to focus attention on something they want to learn or display to the general public.
He said the official images released by the space agency will usually tell you how they were taken and if any have been refined. However, the media sometimes does not include this information when publishing images.
“Are the images we see in the media real representations of extraterrestrial objects, or have they been effectively ‘photoshopped’? Unfortunately there is no simple answer to this question,” he said.
“So while it’s impossible to see a nebula or a galaxy of glorious engineering colors from the safety of our garden, looking at a static printed image can never be as enjoyable as looking at this celestial object through your own telescope, when you discover the wonders of the universe for yourself,” he concluded.
Watch Video “Scientists Reveal Interesting Findings About Stars in the Milky Way Galaxy“
(twu/nwk)
