How do astronomical photos of outer space get their color?
916074
I do a lot of Astrophotography myself. When I get the RAW image it definately does not have that much color. With long exposures you get more light which helps. I usually have to up the saturation and tweak it to give it more coloring. The best to look for is the Orion Nebula, since it is the closest.
12251
The scientific answer is very long which involves dipole scattering, charged particles vector potential and much more.  There is a simple answer though.  Think of how prism works.  When a light hits the prism, what happens?  The answer is the prism breaks the white light into visible color, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet (these are the rainbow color).  Our atmosphere is filled with dust particles.  So when sun ray hits the particles in the atmosphere, it breaks the white light like the prism.  The color blue has the strongest wavelength out the rainbow colors.  Therefore, it effects more than the red and green wavelength, causing the surrounding air to appear blue.  But during the sunset, the sun light passes farther through the atmosphere causing them to deflect and decrease the blue color. So sunset appear to be red.
1044689
There are stars in some, but not all of the photos.\nStrong lighting causes the stars to get underexposed, and that is why you can't see them.\n\nIf you have any reason to doubt our landing on the moon ask the Russians (Who had their own lunar program) if they believe it.  They had many spies, and would have benefited greatly if the moon landing was in fact a hoax.
432706
the thicker atmosphere (because the sun is at an angle) filters out the other colors
369741
The sky is blue to us beause of Rayleigh scattering.  From outer space, you don't have that atmosphere effect, so it's black.
153232
This site says the Martian Sky is butterscotch (yellowish brown):\n\nhttp://webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/14C.html\n\nThis page from the recent Mars rover missions say brownish grey:\n\nhttp://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/sky/PIA01547.html\n\nThe problem of calibrating the images to get a true color is not a simple one:\n\nhttp://mars.spherix.com/spie2003/SPIE_2003_Color_Paper.htm\n\nLook at pictures on the following sites:\n\nhttp://www.marsnews.com/\nhttp://marsrovers.nasa.gov/home/index.html\nhttp://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/martianterrain/PIA00563.html\n\nand they show a pinkish brown sky.\n\nAnd, Mars does indeed have a measurable atmosphere with climate changes.  It is only about 1% of that on earth but it is there and it consists mostly of carbon dioxide.  It is this atmosphere that supports dust storms on the planet and dust devils that have been imaged.\n\nhttp://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/science/climate/index.html\nhttp://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/mars.html\nhttp://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/duststorms/index.html
1017822
stars are very far away and that light u see has been traveling through space for maybe decades now and its passed through clouds of dust and a bunch of stuff.  That makes the star twinkle and gives it colors.  Also, stars are not white(unless they are white dwarfs, but those arnt really stars or they are really really big and hot).  Almost all stars have a color to them.  These can be blue, red, yellow, orange, or any of those colors inbetween.
550925
Mercury: Gray\nVenus: Bright white\nEarth: You have seen the pictures. Mostly blue with lots of white spots and swirls and maybe some green and tan for the land.\nMars: Pale salmon color.\nJupiter: White with horizontal brown bands.\nSaturn: Honey color\nUranus: Light blue\nNeptune : Darker blue.\nYou can see the pictures I have taken of these planets at the source below. I have tried to make the colors match, as closely as possible, what I really see in the eyepiece of the telescope, except for Mars which just looks too plain without enhancing the colors. For Mars, be sure to click on the "Click here to see more Mars images." link and see the one truly natural color picture about half way down the page.
1122982
Debatable. It does just look like a bunch of rocks...what is stranger though, is why NASA keeps doctoring the raw images before releasing them to the public? A good example of this is the 'true' colour of mars. It's not a 'Red Planet' at all-it has a blue sky for one and why are some things masked over? Hmm...
815038
Ask mom or dad if you can borrow their camera for your project.  You need a camera that will let you set the shutter to open for say an hour.  ON a clear night go outside in a very dark place and place the camera on a table open the shutter to take the picture and wait.  The Picture you will see will be of the stars only they should show signs of having tails..  This will show the amount of distance the planet moved and rotated in relation to the fixed point ( the stars )  It will also give you a cool picture.  Good luck.
852339
Well, obviously the sun doesn't stop outputting light just because we're cloudy.  We're still getting 1120 W/m^2 through the atmosphere.  It's just being reflected, scattered, or absorbed by clouds, moisture, etc.\n\nSince clouds appear white from space, that says that a big chunk of the sunlight that would otherwise have it the ground winds up sailing off into space.
138088
The hubble telescope it up above all the atmospheric disturbance, allowing for much higher quality photos.\n\nFor the same reason stars twinkle, land based telescopes have a limited resolution power, after a certain size, it doesnt really help any (unless you want to build a complicated atmospheric correction machine to adjust the mirror to compensate).
28618
The sky is blue because the nitrogen in the air scatters the blue light out of sunlight. \n\nOur sun is a yellow star, so it has slightly yellow light, but it is still pretty close to white light.\n\nSunlight on earth is slightly yellower than it is in space because some of the blue light in sunlight gets scattered out by the presence of nitrogen in the air, making the sky appear blue. So \n\n(White light) - (Some Blue light) = (Yellow light)\n\nAs the sun sets, the sunlight travels through more air, and the nitrogen scatters out more blue light and the sun appears first orange, and then finally red.\n\nAs the sun starts to set:\n\n(White light) - (More Blue light) = (Orange light)\n\nand finally as the sun has almost set:\n\n(White light) - (Lots of Blue light) = (Red light)
949301
Google earth was created over more than just one day, so all those satellite pictures were pieced together (probably).  Normally, colors of the water or ocean vary from the sky due to depth of the water. The deeper the water, the darker the blue... the more shallow water, the lighter in color...sunlight can only reach a certain depth.
143483
Sunlight from the Sun would have to reflect off something in space in order for that region of space not to appear black.  For example the Moon doesn't look black because Sunlight is reflecting off its surface.\n\nSpace is for the most part black since there is an absence of material that can produce or relfect light there.
294962
Every object that has a temperature above absolute zero emits  radiation.  When the radiation comes from a hot object, like the sun, it shows up as visible light or ultraviolet light.  When the radiation comes from a (relatively) cool object, like the earth, the radiation shows up as infrared light (or heat, as we also call it).\n\nThe infrared satellite measures the infrared radiation (that is, the temperature) of what it "sees", which could be the temperature of the cloud tops or, if the sky is clear, the temperature of the ground or sea.\n\nOn infrared satellite images, different temperatures are represented by different colors or different shades of gray.\n\nInfrared satellite images are very useful.  Unlike visible satellite images (that are essentially regular photographs, which means they depend on daylight), they are useful during both day and night!
318117
For the same reason the sky looks blue. If the air were perfectly transparent and without dust or water vapor etc, you would see the distant greeny hill look green(y).\n\nBut due to the presence of microscopic dust in the air, the distant objects take on a very slightly bluish hue.