[denton-scratch]

I believe this photo was taken using filters for three wavebands of IR, with each waveband presented as a different colour. That doesn't sound like "human artistic licence" to me.

But ultimately it's all just data transformed into a visible image; there's plenty of scope for artistic licence in the rendering, if that's what you want.

The striking thing for me is the two diagonal red spikes pointing in opposite directions; apparently a newly-formed giant star does this.

"Huge bipolar jets of molecular hydrogen, represented in red, dominate the image, appearing horizontally across the upper third and vertically on the right. These occur when a star first bursts through its natal envelope of cosmic dust, shooting out a pair of opposing jets into space like a newborn first stretching her arms out into the world."

I don't know how that works.