Nebula colors beyond human sight

Transcript

First, astronomers use telescopes and filters to gather light that is too faint for the eye, or invisible to it altogether. Then they record separate black and white images through different filters, often in blue, green, red, infrared, or narrowband wavelengths. Because many of those wavelengths lie beyond human sight, the colors are assigned later as false color or reconstructed color, so hidden structure becomes visible. That is how astronomers turn invisible emissions from gas clouds into a sky full of color that our eyes could never witness alone.