Hubble hobble

Astronauts are on their way, for the last time, to the Hubble with the intent of giving it life for another five to seven years so that it can continue sending back to us wonderful spectacular images of space - that we had otherwise never see - before it becomes a part of the seemingly infinite capacity of human pollution, this time in the form of space debris.

Many are bemoaning the demise of this 'eye in the space' while they look at the brilliantly coloured images it has sent back to fascinate and delight both space enthusiasts and laymen. I used to be amazed too, till I learnt the truth about them. Yes, there is always the pesky truth of things, waiting to jump out and spoil (or increase it, whatever your take) the fun.

So what happens is that the telescope only 'sees' in black and white, and such are the images it transmits to the scientists back home. Those guys add on layers of the primary colours (based on electromagnetic wavelengths) and voila! we have a coloured picture. By the scientists' own admission, this process is part science and part art, as also that the colours shown us in these photographs are not the same as we would see if we took a spacecraft (like that is possible!) to go and see those sights for ourselves with our very naked eyes. And then we have people complaining about 'Photoshopped' images in advertisements!

And that is not even all. Before Hubble even captures these images to transmit, it filters out a whole range of light that is for some reason "unwanted". The idea, I suppose, is to remove shades of light that are inconsequential to human senses, but I can't help wondering how much scientifically tampered data of this sort is passed off as the true picture of things. No wonder we haven't spotted any aliens yet. Who knows, may be H.P. Lovecraft was on to something when he wrote "The Colour Out of Space".

Anyhow, go ahead, star-gaze some more and hope that there will soon be a day when the likes of Virgin Galactic become as common as the average airline and we can all rely on our senses than on the scientist-artists whose well-meaning work is distorted by an ever-celebrating media to make people like me feel cheated!