Spectacular rainbow cloud in space spawned by cosmic showdown between stars

[Admin]

A stunning rainbow-colored cloud of gas surrounds a pair of stars that duked it out a few hundred years ago.

Spectacular rainbow cloud in space spawned by cosmic showdown between stars : Read more

 

[swiggly]

This is going into my lecture on astrophotography next week as an example of what not to do in a science article that features a false color image. 95% of the public will think these are real colors in the nebula as you would see it with your eyes. Nowhere in the article (unless I missed it) is it mentioned that these are not real color, but false or "representative color" and the headline reinforces this misconception. To well informed folks this would be obvious since it is a mm wave radio image but most of the public will not know that.

 

[Etherair]

It seems like the red jet is the one coming towards us. Hard to tell from this image but possibly a typo got inserted some where along the chain of possession? Many photos of jet pairs show the jet coming towards the viewer much more clearly that the jet retreating into the distance. A single misunderstanding and the incoming jet was colored red instead of blue and vice versa. Grammar is good and spelling is fine so it passes the proofreading.

Or it could be my tired eyes.

 

[swiggly]

Missed the point entirely. The article did not make clear that these are not the actual colors of the object. They HAVE NO actual colors as we know them since it is a radio image. The inexperienced reader is led to believe this is a "rainbow" object which has no meaning for a radio image since the colors are assigned arbitrarily to the radio wavelengths.. This is WAY too common in astronomy journalism and something the average general public reader does not know. Do not assume they do.