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enter image description here

Is this image an original picture which is not photoshoped? I see a huge number of Hubble Telescope images on Google and I'm curious whether they are real images or not. If not, where I can find the real images captured by the Telescope which are not photoshopped?

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  • $\begingroup$ Can you provide a link to where you found the image? $\endgroup$
    – HDE 226868 ♦
    Jul 4, 2017 at 18:14
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    $\begingroup$ I just googled "Hubble Telescope images" and it's one of them. $\endgroup$
    – lemonincider
    Jul 4, 2017 at 18:31
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    $\begingroup$ With reference to the comment above, this image is titled Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2014 and can be found on the following official sources: hubblesite.org/image/3380/news_release/2014-27 and apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140605.html $\endgroup$
    – Dhruv Saxena
    Jul 4, 2017 at 18:51
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    $\begingroup$ Well, all images are post-processed, or reduced as it is called, to some extent. For a start, color images are combined from three different images taken with different filters in three different wavelength bands (e.g. RGB). Also, a deep exposure like the HUDF is combined from a large number of short exposures. $\endgroup$
    – pela
    Jul 4, 2017 at 20:04
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    $\begingroup$ @lemonincider one way to think of it is that modern telescopes simply don't make "natural color" images (like a camera). You're probably familiar with an infrared camera or indeed just an Xray machine at the doctor's. Those don't make "real" images in any meaningful way - right? There simply is no "real" image of an infrared image. (If you as a human look at an "infrared scene" you simply see - nothing). Similarly modern telescopes, in short, simply don't at all make natural "human light" pictures. You can google Hubble "natural color" images (which the scientists make to look that way!) $\endgroup$
    – Fattie
    Jul 8, 2017 at 18:48

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All images provided from large telescopes are a rendering of the data for viewing pleasure. Usually sensors are sensitive in a wide range of wave length, even outside what humans can perceive and color is added by using filters. Hubble uses infrared filters and the so-called Hubble palette (false color).

So, if you mean, do these pictures show what a human observer will see? No, they don't. They are a visualisation of the data collected.

All things observed at low light conditions are black and white, as humans lose color vision at low light.

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