Really? Is that because this is a combined optical and infrared image?APOD Robot wrote:
ESA's new Sun-orbiting Euclid telescope recently captured the most detailed image ever of the bright star forming region M78.
The purple tint in M78's center is caused by dark dust preferentially reflecting the blue light of hot, young stars.
I protest! Blue star light does not make purple reflection nebulas!
Consider the van den Bergh catalog of reflection nebulas. You can find it here. I challenge you to find a single purple reflection nebula in this catalog.
Or why not google "M78 nebula" and "pictures"? You'll get a ton of M78 images. Most of them make M78 look blue, some of them make it look almost colorless, and ESO infrared image makes it look pink, and some amateur images make the entire area, reflection nebula, dust lanes, background and all look purple. Not a single other image produces a color distribution similar to today's APOD.
The purple color of M78 in today's APOD was caused by the artistic choices of the people processing the image. The filters chosen for image may also have something to do with the palette of the final product.
So what kind of M78 images do I prefer? Well, there was an M78 APOD from January 21, 2021 which is nice:
M78 is almost colorless in this APOD. That's okay. M78 isn't very strongly colored.
This picture by John Hayes is nice. I hope I get to keep it here:
M78. Credit: John Hayes.
Ann
Statistics: Posted by Ann — Fri May 24, 2024 5:54 am — Replies 1 — Views 31