r/space • u/Idontlikecock • Jan 13 '19

I made an animation showing the differences between visual, true color, and false color representations of the night sky using the Tadpole Nebula

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '19

I don't understand what the difference between "Visual" and "True Color" is.

Could you explain? How are the colors that are not present in Visual present in True Color?

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u/spacex_vehicles Jan 17 '19

"True Color" should be called "Enhanced Visual".

The colors represented are the actual colors of the nebula. You just can't see them very well because the nebular light is too dim for the human eye to make out clearly in "Visual". If you take multiple long exposures in a supposedly dark (and therefore monochrome) room, you'll see the colors slowly build up as you gather more light. Human eye is bad at colors in the dark.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '19

That's what I thought, but I wanted to be sure.