Abby's Inklings: Spacing out can be fun

By Abby Cowels
Staff Writer

Why is the sky blue?

We have heard this question, mostly as children. The dissonance I felt when the teacher explained it is the earth’s atmosphere; gases are dispersed and reflected and blue light wave lengths travel shorter faster distances. It was a little underwhelming as a child.

Always having an affinity for astronomy and the macabre. I still find myself researching it, learning about new and terrifying celestial objects racing through the void of space.

More recently I discovered that those same atmospheres and gases we have on Earth, pushing wavelengths and particles, are organized in a way that is kind of … exclusive to our planet.

Meaning, those gases and particles do exist in space. Heck, that’s where we got them from. Though they do not have them organized in such a polite way. Space is chaos, the primordial soup of life, no manners at all to our specific human needs.

When we look at those ethereal images of common nebula: the Pillars of Creation, Lagoon. We see striking images of colors and patterns that, I would say, are quite beautiful.

Well, I have news for you! Those captivating, intertwining, dancing amalgamations of light and colors are just not there. No colors, no rainbows, just bleak darkness.

NASA’s Hubble Telescope works overtime, revolving around Earth and producing prolific space imagery. When it delivers photos back to earth, at first, they are just plain black and white.

 Luckily, NASA scientists can put the sparkle back into these images so they may study the components and invisible wavelengths of objects like nebula or distant moons, etc.

They do this by adjusting the exposer within the telescope lens – each exposer letting a specific wavelength through – one red, green and blue. Three simple colors can make an entire spectrum of color to show us striking images of these frightening, yet beautiful objects.

Check out the article I read and some awesome photos!