Today in class, our professor told us that the colorful images we see of the universe are all fake. Even though the structures and clouds are all actual photographs, the colors are all artificially inputed to make the images more surreal and pleasing to the eye. We learned how to do exactly that today. After downloading the image datasets from spacetelescope.org, we used the FITS Liberator application to render the images before importing them into photoshop. Within photoshop, we applied filters to the three separate images, changing them into red, blue and green. Then, we layered them on top of each other, tweaked the color scales a little bit and out came this following masterpiece.

Honestly, this picture may look impressive but anyone with a computer could do it in 30 mins. Anyways, the picture I picked is of the Nebular Cloud – Messier 17. I picked it because it seemed relevant since we just learned about the Nebular Theory and how galaxies form from nebular clouds. Over time, the particles in these clouds collide with each other and some of them, ones that spin in a specific direction, will form spiral galaxies, the ones without a uniform spin will end up as elliptical galaxies. I think the nebular cloud in this picture is still in the early stages of its development so its impossible to tell whether the Messier 17 will end up as a spiral galaxy, or an elliptical galaxy.