The evolutionary reason for space pics to look cool

Tefal said:
There's a guy who works with them on here somewhere he posted a a quite detailed description on how they're made (+ the composite) parts they're basically paintings.

if you ever got there it would be more like a grey barely visible fog.
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I'm familiar with how they're taken, i've spent far too many hours browsing SGL :p

Are paintings not impressive? If you look at most nebulae through a telescope they're grey, but you can still make out the structure and patterns that make them beautiful. They're only grey because the human eye isn't capable of resolving colour from so little light. If you had a big enough telescope, or you got closer then you would start to see colour. Then more detail. Then the full majesty of it, which when you think about it would be far more impressive than any picture ever could be. As for what you'd see if you went inside one... who knows ;)
 
I understand what the OP is trying to get at. We are wired to find pattens in nature, all animals are. We look for and respond to patterns in behaviour, noises, the things we see. By noticing and understanding pattens, we can better find food and evade predators.

We look for symmetry. Symmetry in a mate tells us they are genetically healthy, symmetry in food tells us it's not bad. Our eyes have evolved to see more clearly the most important colours to succeed in life; to spot food, prey, predators.

There is an idea of an 'evolutionary' reason to like the pictures. Personally though i don't just like the visual aspect, i like the pictures for the physical implications behind them. A beautiful picture of a galaxy? Or a picture of a 100 billion nuclear furnaces, each perhaps, with its own solar system. A picture of a magnificent nebula or a picture of 10 billion years of hydrogen fusion followed by an explosion that perhaps is helping other worlds measure the expansion of the universe?
 
Tefal said:
yes the painting is the subject however isn't usually that great.


why focus o the subject and not the artist is you are simply wanting a fantasy picture?
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You will agree that a digital camera designed for terrestrial use largely replicates the spectrum of light as seen by the human eye, yes? And you also understand that the reason we take long exposure shots of objects in space is because of their distance, and the relatively small amount of light (number of photons) that reach us, yes? So if we moved closer, we wouldn't need such long exposures. If we moved close enough, it would be visible to the naked eye in it's full beauty, because the number of photons reaching the eye would be on the same level as what we evolved to see naturally on Earth.

Also, we stack digital photos partially to increase the total number of photons that form an image, but largely to decrease the amount of digital noise, something that isn't a factor when our brain forms an image. And i hope you will agree that this method is an 'acceptable' way of replicating what it would be like to be a lot closer to an object than we actually are. With that in mind, how about browsing this forum for a few minutes?

http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-deep-sky/

Anything that was taken with an 'unmodded DSLR' (modded DSLRs are just DSLRs with certain filters removed, to allow more photons from a broader spectrum through) or similar will be very similar to what we would see with the naked eye at a reasonable distance. This one for instance:

http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-deep-sky/160469-my-m31-project-eq3-2-unguided-through-achro.html

Or this:

http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-deep-sky/160073-m81-galaxy.html

Or this (not a DSLR but is sensitive to the same spectrum):

http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-deep-sky/159611-hour-m42-darkish-sky.html

And bear in mind that these aren't taken with huge observatories, more often than not these are amateurs in their back yard.
 
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Your last link Permabanned, stunning image.

Is that just stacked 10 minute exposures and no colour adding/modification at all?
 
SlyReaper said:
You know, I think they would.

Here's a theory I've just pulled out of my donkey. There's an evolutionary advantage to the urge to explore. It means you and your tribe are likely to find new lands to inhabit, new resources to exploit, and generally make your tribe thrive, thus making it more likely that you'll pass on your genes.

Pictures of planets and galaxies represent unexplored territory. There's nothing inherent in the images themselves to suggest that, but we've been trained to recognise a picture of a galaxy as a galaxy. Once you learn that there's all that space out there, all those places to explore, it's natural to want to visit them and see them close up. We associate those images with the urge to explore.

There you go - a possible link to evolution.
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That might explain why pictures of space shuttles, rockets, cars and planes seem to be the most popular desktop backgrounds, after pics of boobs, space and mountains.

My desktop pic is the open sea, never really thought about it.
 
Dunks said:
Your last link Permabanned, stunning image.

Is that just stacked 10 minute exposures and no colour adding/modification at all?
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No more than you would for any regular digital image. TJ is very talented/experienced, has very expensive gear and they were camping at a dark site, free from light pollution - all worth bearing in mind but still :p

Ask them about it if you want :)
 
Yeah, I phrased it badly, it's all just visible light isn't it.

There's just something so awe inspiring about M42.
 
Yeah the exploration angle makes the most sense. Question answered I suppose.

It's not so much the mountain that is attractive, but the natural intrigue of what might be on the other side or at the top.

What mysterious and exotic boobies might lie beyond...?

591890jungfrauviewfromh.jpg
 
i reckon we are amazed by things we are unable to see day to day. we are amazed when we go to a foreign country, yet the locals there are used to it.

similarly, mountain people are amazed at how flat holland is.

and.. we are all amazed with space..
 
Lol tefal did you literally say that something that we PERCEIVE through vision (different for everyone, different to every species) is wrong?

Pfft.
 
StriderX said:
Lol tefal did you literally say that something that we PERCEIVE through vision (different for everyone, different to every species) is wrong?

Pfft.
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what?:confused:


One, what you "perceive " though vision is actually pretty much the same for everyone barring those with defective parts, otherwise road signs and C.o.s.h.h symbols would be a bit useless.

secondly, i said they don't really look like that because they're false colour images/touch ups/combinations of things we CAN'T see but are more scientifically useful that they just convert to colour and stick together to help get grant money.
 
Tefal said:
One, what you "perceive " though vision is actually pretty much the same for everyone barring those with defective parts, otherwise road signs and C.o.s.h.h symbols would be a bit useless.
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Not sure if you are talking about colour but it's amazing that colour perception is actually heavily defined by language. So different cultures can actually 'see' colours very differently.
 
Tefal said:
what?:confused:


One, what you "perceive " though vision is actually pretty much the same for everyone barring those with defective parts, otherwise road signs and C.o.s.h.h symbols would be a bit useless.

secondly, i said they don't really look like that because they're false colour images/touch ups/combinations of things we CAN'T see but are more scientifically useful that they just convert to colour and stick together to help get grant money.
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All senses can be tricked, you cant trust them to be infallible.

I mean we only see a tiny bit of the spectrum and we use machines to fill in the rest of it so that we can perceive it.

I mean im not disagreeing that they touch it up, obviously.
 
Tefal said:
what?:confused:


One, what you "perceive " though vision is actually pretty much the same for everyone barring those with defective parts, otherwise road signs and C.o.s.h.h symbols would be a bit useless.

secondly, i said they don't really look like that because they're false colour images/touch ups/combinations of things we CAN'T see but are more scientifically useful that they just convert to colour and stick together to help get grant money.
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Not really true at all.

Most of the space images are perfectly viable normal visible light images that go through the same enhancements as any other image by photographers. Great photographers like Ansel Adam who lugged giant camera around from the 1930s onwards basically did the equivalent of photoshopping. All of his classic photos have been dodged and burned, contrast enhanced etc. https://www.google.com/search?q=ans...m=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1280&bih=831


Sometimes things go further and the picture is a collage of multiple exposure, purely due to technological constraints of focal lengths, sensor sizes, resolution, exposure times etc. This is no different with panoramic photogrpahy which will take maybe a dozen photos and stick them together to provide sufficient angle of view and resolution.

Sometimes other spectrum are included, but this is no different to lots of other modern photography such as IR. Future cameras will likely include near-IR pixels in the RGB in order to record better contrast information. I've played with prototypes and got great images.

And as for perception- you are wrong again. Everyone perceives colours in slightly different ways, this often leading to daabtes for some in-between secondary colours like turquoise where some people may perceive more green and some more blue.
You also have to realize that the the colour filter used on digital ssensor (and with colour film) has very different properties to a human eye, e.g. they are much more sensitive to red and near-IR than blue, which is not the same for humans. Therefore the images have to be automatically adjusted anyway to fit closer to a typical human's visual spectrum.
 
Another thing to note, if you just use a normal point and shoot camera it will automatically do a lot of processing for exposure, colour hue, contrast, sharpness, noise, saturation, white balance, etc. etc.

Photographers like to have control over this processing rather than letting a little microchip decide it all for you. Hence we process RAW images that don't have any defined contrast/sharpness/noise reduction etc. For a vast majority of space images is the same, rather than letting a little microchip estimate what is good a human is i the loop to select appropriate settings.
 
initially I thought it was a stupid question then...

dark enclosed places hold hidden dangers maybe?

so open spaces look nice a safe place to be because you can see any dangers....

mountain range's would form a distance look open and safe, higher ground is probably a better place to live as well (obviously not in the snow).

im sure burrowing animals would not be attracted to open spaces....
 
PermaBanned said:
What?

Yeah, i don't see why it would be linked to evolution as such. But i think we enjoy such sights because it adds perspective to our lives, to see something so magnificent and... huge makes us realize just how insignificant we are. That often leads to a complete change in attitude.
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(maybe) stars look nice because we have no evolutionary reason to expect them to be dangerous...

night might be bad when you can see the stars however they are the oposite to night, they are bright the same as day light...

if those white dots of light randomly flew at us and killed us im sure they would not look so nice... (if it had been happening for millions of years)
 
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