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Most of the artifacts you see are actually asteroids. We don't take all the colors at once when making an image. The ccds just count photons that fall on them,

Most of the artifacts you see are actually asteroids. We don't take all the colors at once when making an image. The ccds just count photons that fall on them, so we have giant glass filters that allow specific wavelengths through. We then image the fields multiple times with multiple filters and then map the wavelengths of light into color images (see other post about trying to make them as perceptually correct as possible). However, because taking multiple images over time means that things which are changing (i.e. moving asteroids) not not appear at the same places when we combine them. Most of the time these time changing effects get filtered out in the combination step, but sometimes if they are bright enough, or persistent enough the make it through. As an FYI, you can right click in the sky viewer and it will show the coordinates of the object, and there is a button to copy a shareable link that will take anyone right to where you are looking in the sky.

doodlebugging 1mo ago
Thank you for this useful reply. I appreciate the description of image building using the glass filters. That makes sense to me. The asteroids seem like an imaging issue that would be difficult to deal with since they are likely near-field objects that are in motion relative to far-field objects. That would also explain some of the trails that one sees if the objects along that trail are the same object imaged over a multi-step process. I figured there had to be a way to get real coordinates so that people could do research but I was not bright enough to push the buttons to find that link and had to use the tool I hate - Snip & Sketch. I have a license for SnagIt and Greenshot on another workstation, either of which is better than S&S but that installation is inaccessible due to hardware issues. Thanks for helping to make it easier to use these images!

doodlebugging 1mo ago

Thank you for this useful reply. I appreciate the description of image building using the glass filters. That makes sense to me. The asteroids seem like an imaging issue that would be difficult to deal with since they are likely near-field objects that are in motion relative to far-field objects. That would also explain some of the trails that one sees if the objects along that trail are the same object imaged over a multi-step process. I figured there had to be a way to get real coordinates so that people could do research but I was not bright enough to push the buttons to find that link and had to use the tool I hate - Snip & Sketch. I have a license for SnagIt and Greenshot on another workstation, either of which is better than S&S but that installation is inaccessible due to hardware issues. Thanks for helping to make it easier to use these images!