NASA Data Challenge

After exploring the NASA Data Challenge on NASA's website, I have learnt a lot about false colors, image processing and general things about Astrophotography. Using their image processing tool, I was able to use pictures of the Carina Nebula to create one new RGB picture with red, blue and green filters. These images were all taken from the same telescope and since this telescope can only take one image at a time, there is a shift in the objects due to the Earth's rotation. Using the shift tool I was able to align all three images correctly. The color that we see in astrophotography is due to false color. False color is used by Astronomers to better understand the image they are working with. With these added filters to the images, we can recognizes characteristics about the object much easier. While these filters can be red, green and blue in our image, they are not those colors in real life. Humans can only see visible light which is the true color but light from other parts of spectrum can also be seen with different filters. Filters let different types of light in which are needed to analyze things that we can't be seen in the visible spectrum. Combining all these filters will lead us to a one comprehensive picture which is what I created in the image seen below.