Hubble returns. Nasa: 8 new images since servicing mission in May 2009
wired.com
wired.com
I found a better page for viewing the images, not quite as painful as the Wired method (Next... Next...).
But they would still not be "unaltered". Astronomical objects have an extremely large dynamic range in terms of brightness. If you've ever looked at a galaxy through a telescope, you'll see what I mean. You just see a blob that's the bright central bulge. The brightness distribution in a galaxy falls off exponentially with radius. If you amplify the signal to see the faint outer parts, the central part would hurt your eyes (or, practically speaking, saturate).
We made a movie of a simulated galaxy merger for a competition last year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agqLEbOFT2A In this rendering, the colors are approximately realistic, but the brightness is not. For my own education, I made an alternative rendering with just a fixed linear stretch that should more realistically (barring monitor gamma) mimic what the eye would see. In that movie (I've been meaning to upload it), you basically only see the centers of the two galaxies, nothing else.
So the bottom line is, to see any detail you must "manipulate" these images. It's reminiscent of High-Dynamic Range photography [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging], where you compress the range of brightnesses to be able to convey a scene in one image.
Please upload it. A side-by-side comparison does have an educational value on itself.
http://internal.hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2...
Scroll down to "About this image"
lutorm, I appreciate your example of the brightness of galaxies needing to be altered, pretty much just compressing the dynamic range (borrowed from audio, sorry). I will never picture galaxies in my mind the same way.
Thanks to andrewf I got this from the website:
The image is a composite of separate exposures made by the WFC3 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. Six filters were used to sample narrow wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are:
I hope this has some scientific value but I'm suspicious that it has much more of a public relations value. This strikes me as completely dishonest. Pretty up Hubble images so the public will throw as much money as possible at it.
Compressing the brightness of objects like galaxies seems reasonable, and I know I've seen accurate images of planets, but combining filtered images, each with a different "pretty" color, is just whoring up deep space.
I don't know about you, but it's deeply moving for me.
amazing, i'm glad we have programs like this. I can say being in my 20's i'm actually pretty sad too have missed the excitement of the apollo program's in the 60's and 70's. i can only hope i get to witness similar events in my lifetime.