Hubble Space Telescope fly-through of the Gum Nebula

The flight traverses the foreground stars and approaches the lower left rim of the nebula Gum 29. Passing through the wispy darker clouds on the near side, the journey reveals bright gas illuminated by the intense radiation of the newly formed stars of cluster Westerlund 2. Within the nebula, several pillars of dark, dense gas are being shaped by the energetic light and strong stellar winds from the brilliant cluster of thousands of stars. Note that the visualization is intended to be a scientifically reasonable interpretation and that distances within the model are significantly compressed
newtboysays...

Beautiful, but I have an issue with these 'Hubble images' that aren't real images, but are interpretations of the actual images. It's hard to know how good real Hubble images are, because so many that we see are also nothing but interpretations.
There was a great NOVA about it this week, timed for the 25th anniversary of deployment. Unfortunately, I think they also 'interpreted' some of the images, keeping me confused about the real resolution Hubble provides. I want to see the raw, unaltered images, maybe side by side with an 'interpretation' to get a better idea of what we really get from Hubble.

HenningKOsays...

Well THIS one is obviously a CG interpretation, perhaps arranging real photographs in a 3D program and then moving a virtual camera through them...
But the spectacular Hubble still photographs are REAL in the sense that they are graphs of real photons coming off real stuff out there. Just filtered for different spectra and then composited back together, packing more information into a single image.
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/meaning_of_color/index.php
I know what you mean though. There are no "natural light" cameras on the Hubble. That would be a waste of space.

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