Colorful Clouds Of Carina
Explanation:
Tumultuous clouds of
the Carina Nebula,
8000 light-years away, glow in planet Earth's
southern sky.
Striking and detailed,
this close-up of a portion of
the famous nebula
is a combination of exposures
through six different filters taken with the
Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Planetary
Camera 2 in April of 1999.
Dramatic dark dust knots and complex features revealed are
sculpted
by the winds and radiation of Carina's massive and
energetic stars.
But how were this picture's
colors generated?
Astronomical images produced
from Hubble Space Telescope data
can be composed of exposures made using relatively
narrow filters which don't match the color
responses of the
human eye.
Some of the filters even transmit wavelengths of light
outside
the visible spectrum.
Exposures made with different narrow filters,
as in this case,
are translated to a visible color where shorter wavelengths are assigned
bluer and longer wavelengths assigned redder colors.
This color scheme represents a "chromatically ordered"
way of presenting the data rather than a
natural color image.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
