What's real anymore?

[OpaDC]

I'm sitting here watching a show about underwater thermal vents. Pretty amazing stuff. One, that we can build the stuff to get humans down there to study things, two, the astonishing discoveries they have made. But as I sit here, I'm not sure sometimes what is real and what is computer graphics. Some is obvious, but others? These graphics people are just outstanding. But can we trust what we see anymore? This show switches back and forth so often, with no captions letting you know real from graphics.
Along this same line of thought, the Hubble pictures are also awesome, and I know some are Xrays, infrared, etc. But are any of the colors real, or are they all enhanced in various light spectrum's?
Or maybe I'm just really a cartoon dreaming all this.

edit: Just I as posted this, they showed pictures from Hubble in the closing. Now I'm psychic too.

[crokett]

From what I understand most of the deep space pictures are taken in gray scale. NASA then colorizes them based on the gray scale values. I think gray scale allows you to interpolate what the colors actually are. Or something like that. There are guys on here who do more photo stuff who can correct me if needed.

[L. D. Jeffries]

As I remember from an article in Scientific American the process goes like this: They assign a color to different gases; IE: yellow for hydrogen, green for carbon..etc..etc. Then the photos are colored using that method. The intensity of any gas gives the intensity to the color. And yes the photos are send down in gray scale. What ever they are awesome!

[MilDoc]

RE: Hubble photographs

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind...ning_of_color/

[crokett]

Paul that is a fascinating link. Thanks.