Would I be able to have a view like this...

Just a question that I have beed wondering about for a while now and here seems to be as good a place as any to ask...

If I had a space ship that could go anywhere in the universe would I be able to have a view like this out side of my window or are these images full of false colour and too enhanced to be able to see such a sight?

I hate to sound geeky but I heard the makers of star trek regularly liase with scientists to make sure things of that nature look as close to the real thing (or what is known of the real thing) as possible. All the other stuff with the different aliens is utter crap but on this part they seem pretty keen to not have the special effects not date so quickley. I have no links but i have a book I won at the video shop called art of star trek that says it, can't remember page no though. Might be bolloks, I don't watch much star trek.

Yeah you would have sights like that, however nebula are usualy BROWN not vibrant colors. Still it would be spectacular to be close to something like that no? Wake up, go eat breakfast and do so near a window so you could see a nearby galaxy... NICE!

nearly all far objects are FALSE colour, therefore no one knows what they really look like

Originally posted by Oblate Spheroid
nearly all far objects are FALSE colour, therefore no one knows what they really look like

I have to disagree with that. Now it's true that there are lots of images that are false colour, but just take a look at some amateur astrophotography. A lot of those images are in true colour, like this one of M 42 The only thing is that this image is 2.5 hours worth of exposures. And that's the main thing really, exposure time. It can take a good hour or more to get these kinds of images.

You can check out some more of those images here: stargazer.christelhager.info...

And you wouldn't be able to get such clarity because of the blur caused by the atmosphere.


THR

I don't think you would. We are on an outer spiral of the Milky Way galaxy at the moment, and our astronauats enjoy no such views. I reckon that the only reason we can view incomparibly massive clusters like this is because we are so far from them. Were you to get close enough to park next to them, they would be overwhelmingly large and the effect would be destroyed.