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wowsosquare t1_j1qmb7q wrote

Reply to comment by Astrofishisist in A group of galaxies called "Stephan's Quintet" was featured in the opening scene of the Christmas movie "It's A Wonderful Life" (1946), where angels were speaking from. Left is from the movie, right is from the James Webb Space Telescope. by Yoprobro13

YOU are the best thanks for the perfect explanation!

I'd like to ask another question in the form of an ill informed statement

>infrared light isn’t just looking at how ‘hot’ these space objects are

Isn't it though? I mean I suppose an we could say that in the visible spectrum, we are looking at how bright things are (amplitude), but also what color they are...so in the IR we are looking at how hot things are (amplitude/ brightness), but also which frequency (color) they are emitting. And so the false color added by computer processing is assigned based on something like higher frequency IR = closer to blue, and lower frequency IR= closer to red?

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Harbulary-Batteries t1_j1qw375 wrote

Heat is not the same as infrared light - heat can be emitted along a wide variety of wavelengths. We’re just looking at wavelengths and amplitudes on a different part of the spectrum.

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kvetcha-rdt t1_j1roiko wrote

this is basically it. these telescopes are 'seeing' in wavelengths the human eye cannot detect - these images are basically just 'frequency adjusted' for our vision. It's a bit like night-vision goggles.

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