CREDIT: NASA/JPL
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, last week revealed this dazzling image that combines data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope, its infrared-seeing cousin. It's an in-depth view of the Orion Nebula centered on the Trapezium, the four massive stars at its heart.
The raw data for the image were a series of numbers indicating where on the electromagnetic spectrum the light occurs. Spitzer astrophysicist Robert Hurt and his colleagues shifted the infrared wavelengths detected by Spitzer into the channels of the visible spectrum, making shorter wavelengths bluer and longer ones redder. The blues and greens in the image are from Hubble's ultraviolet and visible-light data; they show heated and ionized hydrogen and sulfur gas. The reds, oranges, and yellows are from organic molecules sensed by Spitzer. "The public is still bothered by the term 'false color,' as if there's something not quite kosher about it," says Hurt. "The colors are real; they're just beyond the perception of the human eye because they're outside the visible spectrum."
