NASA Photo of Great Orion Nebula

New NASA Photo is From 20,000 Light-Years Away, and It is Bonkers

Each photo taken by NASA scientists is more breathtaking than the last, but the latest is a true showstopper. The image shows a collection of stars glittering in the dark more than 20,000 light-years away with unbelievable clarity.

Thanks to continuous advances in technology, space photography gets sharper and more vibrant by the year, giving us a dazzling picture of faraway stars and the universe around us. But the Hubble Space Telescope truly outdid itself this time, snapping a photo of a nebula inside the constellation Carina. The star cluster within shimmers like fireworks in the night sky while ethereal clouds of blue and purple gas and dust frame the foreground.

As with each of their uploads, NASA also shared some fascinating information about the constellation with the photo. “The nebula, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina, contains a central cluster of huge, hot stars, and is surrounded by clouds of interstellar gas and dust – the raw material for new star formation,” they wrote. “Its relative closeness to Earth makes it an excellent lab for studying such distant and momentous events.”

“Star clusters like this provide important clues to understanding the origin of massive star formation in the early, distant universe. Astronomers also use massive clusters to study distant starbursts that occur when galaxies collide, igniting a flurry of star formation.”

Every NASA Photo Was Originally in Black and White

One of the most awe-inspiring aspects of the photos posted by NASA is the endless rainbow of colors found in space. But did you know those colors aren’t part of the original pictures? The Hubble and James Webb telescopes can only take pictures in black and white. All those gorgeous blues, purples, and greens are added in later by scientists back on Earth. In fact, NASA’s spectacular space photos receive a great deal of editing before being released to the public.

That’s not to say that the images are faked. Instead, the color, contrast, and brightness of the photos are simply edited to be visible to the naked eye. This is because only a small fraction of the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum is visible to humans.

Though looking around at the world can make it appear that we can see every color imaginable, humans can really only see red, green, and blue. Every other color we see is just a combination of those.

When NASA scientists snap photos of space, they use filters to record specific wavelengths of light. They then add in red, green, and blue hues to create full-color images for the public to enjoy. So while the pictures are heavily processed, the scenes they show are very much real.