Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Cosmic Beauty -- Astronomy Pictures are Beautiful, But Do They Reflect Reality?

I'm very excited right now because Space.com recently published one of my articles; you can read it here. The general idea is that, perhaps unbeknownst to lots of people, astronomy pictures -- like the beautiful images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope -- are usually manipulated by astronomers. And there are continuing debates about how far those manipulations should go. For instance, the color blue is astronomy images signifies the hottest of heat, while red signifies a cooler temperature. But in our everyday lives, the meanings of the colors are reversed. Should those common understandings prevail in astronomy? It's hard to say. I'll leave it to you to make up your own mind.