[sigstoat]

Folks should keep this in mind when they get agitated about the possibility of NASA getting rid of Hubble. Basically all of your pretty space pictures are false color, so it doesn't matter which space telescope produces them.

[windsurfer]

How are the hubble's images any more "false color" than my digital SLR?

[gaius]

Because when you assign a visible colour to a particular invisible wavelength, you can choose whatever colour you like. If you went there and looked with the naked eye, you'd see just black.

[mcantor]

Exactly. Since when is space less awesome than we think it is?

[InclinedPlane]

You wouldn't just see black, you'd see a different set of colors, generally more muted than the false-color pictures from telescopes.

[sigstoat]

i don't think there is a single instrument on Hubble which is confined to the human visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, or any subset thereof. and i'd be amazed if duplicating the color response curves of the human eye was a design consideration.

unlike your DSLR (unless you popped the IR filter off of it).