Posted on 11/09/2021 2:56:25 PM PST by MtnClimber
Explanation: Why would you want to fake a universe? For one reason -- to better understand our real universe. Many astronomical projects seeking to learn properties of our universe now start with a robotic telescope taking sequential images of the night sky. Next, sophisticated computer algorithms crunch these digital images to find stars and galaxies and measure their properties. To calibrate these algorithms, it is useful to test them on fake images from a fake universe to see if the algorithms can correctly deduce purposely imprinted properties. The featured mosaic of fake images was created to specifically mimic the images that have appeared on NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD). Only one image of the 225 images is real -- can you find it? The accomplished deceptors have made available individual fake APOD images that can be displayed by accessing their ThisIsNotAnAPOD webpage or Twitter feed. More useful for calibrating and understanding our distant universe, however, are fake galaxies -- a sampling of which can be seen at their ThisIsNotAGalaxy webpage.
For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.
Probably has to do with enhanced color via filters. They look pretty real to me but we’re used to seeing objects filtered for hydrogen and other wavelengths.
I’ll go with the egg in column 4 row 4.
Goo goo g’ joob?
I picked 4 or 5 that I thought it could be and the one real was in my list.
I’m not even gonna try, I’ll get it wrong, anyway.
Apparently the correct answer is column 12 row 12,
but I don’t know how anyone is supposed to know that,
nor do I know what NASA’s point was with today’s APOD.
They are all “fake” ie ... digitally enhanced. I actually got to meet the guy from NASA that does this. the pictures they get from deep space are really binary translations of infrared images from cameras from the 60’s... so they make educated guesses about some of the colors. Also, he said any photography in deep space is tricky because there is so little light and nothing for the flash to bounce off of...
I thot I recognized that one as a genuine article. Its a snapshot from Hubble.
What Is Meant By "False Color"?The term "false color" is used to describe what astronomers (and others) often do to images to make them more comprehensible. Long ago, when astronomers first started generating images of sources, they wound up with essentially images that were just shades of gray - ranging from pure black to pure white. Each shade represented the intensity of the radio emission from a particular part of the object. Radio astronomers took their shades-of-gray images and converted them to color ones by assigning red to the most intense radio emission and blue to the least intense emission recorded on the image. Intermediate colors (orange, yellow, and green) were assigned to the intermediate levels of radio intensity. Black was assigned to places in the image in which there appeared to be no radio emission.
This process allows astronomers to more quickly recognize features in the images. Typically, when looking at a photograph, the human eye can only distinguish about 16 shades of gray from one another. Using millions of colors, instead, we can often bring out details in an image that we might otherwise miss. These days, just about every area of astronomy creates "false color" images. Remember - electromagnetic radiation does not have "real" color except for the radiation that has a wavelength of between 400 and 700 nm. That little range is called the "visible" spectrum, since it is what we humans beings see with our eyes!
Below on the left, you see the actual image of the asteroid Ida taken by NASA‘s Galileo satellite. On the right, you see a false color version of the same image. The features colored blue are now quite apparent. They are believed to represent "young" terrain on this ancient object.
That's the one that made my brain go "Bzzzzzzzzzzt" and smoke come out of my ears. :-)
It’s the pic of Dark Matter.................
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