Planetary Society logo
  • “Exploration is in our nature.” - Carl Sagan

A color image ... that isn't

A color image ... that isn't
A color image ... that isn't Probably the most publicized image of comet ISON to date was taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 of the Hubble Space Telescope on April 30 - not for science but to get a pretty picture of the comet in front of the deep canvas of the distant Universe. But the complex interplay of ISON's motion along its orbits and Hubble fast movement in its Low Earth Orbit ruined all attempts to stack the exposures through two filters into something presentable. To save the effort, the black-and-white image of ISON with the least trailing was pasted -- in grey -- onto a color composite of the sky background, resulting in a hybrid black-and-white comet / color sky image that continues to confuse. NASA/ESA/STScI/AURA