What effect does the required brightness range stretching process have on the visual representation of deep space objects?

Answer

It inherently exaggerates the contrast between faint and bright areas compared to eye perception

Because deep space objects are inherently faint, the raw data captured by telescopes results in images dominated by black space surrounding a relatively small, undetailed object. To reveal subtle structures, especially in the dimmer outer edges of nebulae or galaxies, image processors must perform a 'stretching' operation on the brightness range. This involves remapping the absolute darkest signal that registered any light to a visible gray/black level, and mapping the brightest signal to white. This manipulation is necessary for visual clarity but inherently amplifies the difference between the brightest points and the faintest points beyond what the eye would naturally perceive if viewing the object directly.

What effect does the required brightness range stretching process have on the visual representation of deep space objects?

#Videos

How are Hubble Space Telescope images 'colorized' and processed?

Related Questions

If a human eye were next to a distant nebula captured by Hubble, what would the light appear as?Human vision is limited to visible light wavelengths between what range, unlike Hubble's capabilities?In the common configuration of the Hubble Palette, which chemical element is mapped to the red channel?Which condition must be met for a Hubble image resulting from filter data to often be labeled "true color"?What is the primary scientific purpose behind presenting Hubble images as false-color representations?What specific color channel is assigned to light emitted by ionized oxygen (O III) in the Hubble Palette?What is the immediate step following the acquisition of three grayscale data sets from different filters?What effect does the required brightness range stretching process have on the visual representation of deep space objects?What primary part of the spectrum does the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mainly observe, often resulting in different color schemes than Hubble?In the analogy comparing image processing to musical translation, what specific aspect is represented by the color palette selection?
HubbleastronomycolorsSpace Imagesfalse color