I was so disappointed when I learned that all these Hubble images are really black and white pictures and NASA just adds color back to them. Still beautiful.
Root - They base the colors on scientific reality. Presence of certain gases that will tend to refract various frequencies of visible light, etc. They also make visual equivalents of radio waves and gamma rays (things we can't see but are nonetheless real). It's no more artificial than an image of a microscopic organism artificially enlarged through a microscope. I don't think it gives us a false perspective of its true nature.
Fifty-two-eighty - You're right. When I see a SLIGHTLY LESS COLORFUL version of a picture of a doomed star, going nuclear-critical at various stages, sending plumes of gas and flowering bursts of energy covering the entire spectrum of light from gamma to radio waves, realizing that this happens BILLIONS of times every earth day in a turbulent cosmic cauldron roiling with the birth, death, and rebirth of the very building blocks of our reality...
http://www.lessing-photo.com/p2/010101/0…
An absolutely awesome photograph. The splendor of space is just incredible. Go Hubble.
BTW, I have a telescope and conduct my own planet/star viewing.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060326.html
The eye *of* the universe is looking at you, Charles...
That said, it looks like a chicken gizzard to me.
Fifty-two-eighty - You're right. When I see a SLIGHTLY LESS COLORFUL version of a picture of a doomed star, going nuclear-critical at various stages, sending plumes of gas and flowering bursts of energy covering the entire spectrum of light from gamma to radio waves, realizing that this happens BILLIONS of times every earth day in a turbulent cosmic cauldron roiling with the birth, death, and rebirth of the very building blocks of our reality...
I realize that it's actually not that cool.