NacoleW

Can anyone explain in layman terms why the public receives CGI pictures from space and not a photo in original form? Thank you.

Photographer Jim Loc: Rio Vista, CA

A short answer would be that space images (like those taken from Hubble) are usually composites of exposures taken through a number of filters sensitive to certain wavelengths of light. At times the filters are used to enhance the differences between wavelengths close enough to each other that we might not easily see a difference but which would be important to distinguish for scientific purposes. Other filters may help visualize wavelengths that we would not normally be able to see. This invisible light is then assigned a color for purposes of making an image.

Agencies such as NASA are interested in images that meet their needs as scientific tools, not necessarily photos that are accurate as to what you and I might see looking out of the window of our spaceship! 🙂

TonyBot

Yeah, what he said!

And here is a good example (answer?) why:

https://www.popphoto.com/story/photo-of-the-day/crab-nebula-3d-image/?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=email

ggab Loc: ?

Michael1079 Loc: Indiana

Great answer!

gsmith051 Loc: Fairfield Glade, TN

Good answer for all of us. Welcome to the forum.

1bignaturenerd Loc: Mississippi

Great question, great answer, and really cool video. Thank y’all 😊

ecurb Loc: Metro Chicago Area

Transmission bandwidth or lack thereof. A craft out at Mars orbit and beyond can take days to send a signal back to Sol 3. It sends the minimum data to create an image, hence CGI assembly of photo.

blueskies920

Just saw this listed you might like also
NASA opens up all their media files

https://www.diyphotography.net/nasa-makes-entire-media-library-publicly-accessible-copyright-free/?fbclid=IwAR2M3Q_NM-Di5iSOtN23pzhGi9okYauEUWkUICS39Q4KTs--2PmOCeSXGio