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Antares (FLL) Question about Helix Nebula

Last post 10-05-2009 10:12 AM by Paulett Liewer. 1 replies.
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  • 10-03-2009 5:07 PM

    Antares (FLL) Question about Helix Nebula

    Why are there different colors seen in the nebula, what does this mean?

     

     

     

     

  • 10-05-2009 10:12 AM In reply to

    • Paulett Liewer
    • Top 10 Contributor
    • Joined on 03-11-2008
    • Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of
    • Posts 68

    Re: Antares (FLL) Question about Helix Nebula

     Hi

     The different colors results from different regions of the nebula gas being at different temperatures.  Gases emit different colors at different temperature becuase different atoms are responsible for emitting most of the light.

    But be careful when looking at astronomy pictures, including solar astronomy!  Usually, an astonomy image is taken with a filter or detector that sees only a narrow range of  color; the resulting image is "black and white". The object might then be photographed in several different color ranges. Then the images are combined by assigning a color to each color range to give you the beautiful color images that you see.

     Many of the images of the Sun are taken in ultraviolet light that your eye can't even see! 

    Hope this doesn't confuse things...

     Paulett

     

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