Space photo processing

Abstract

During the last academic year, our school's Astronomy Group focused its research on the exploration and study of space, its stellar objects and phenomena that take place out there.  As part of the so-called D-SPACE project, in collaboration with few other educational institutions of our country, we decided, in cooperation with the Skinakas Observatory and the University of Crete, to request to acquire pictures of certain stellar objects, visible during the summer period.

The editing of space photographs is considered to be one of the most controversial issues, with many conspiracy theorists calling it an act of propaganda by the major space companies to present a fake image of space rather than the real one. Particularly, this issue came to a climax over the past year following the release of the photos by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the reactions that ensued over the "vividness" of their colors. Following my personal extensive research and, in accordance with the opinion of the majority of the scientific community, I attempt through this research to logically refute the aforementioned argument and highlight the benefits of processing space images, taking also into consideration my own personal experience of processing the Skinakas images.