Creating a single Hubble image is a painstaking process

Jun 8, 2013 16:51 GMT  ·  By

Hubble has been responsible for some stunning images over the years. Of course, everyone knows that those images aren't entirely real, just like everyone knows celebrities on magazine covers don't really look like that.

But just how much work and what goes into creating one of the images that ends up published? One video put together by the Hubble team explains how they get from raw data to the polished end result.

It involves several shots and quite a lot of manipulation. Most of that is just to get rid of junk data and errors caused by cosmic rays for example.

But it does mean that producing a single image is a painstaking process. At the very least, for a single color image, three single color images have to be shot.

That's because Hubble can only work with one filter at a time. The satellite has 40 filters to choose from, making it possible to shoot in a broad spectrum.