is NGC 6543 actually red?

Posted by Costas on May 13, 2002 at 09:22
(195.167.165.10)

I recently became quite curious after reading an article by Jacob Berkowitz entitled 'How NASA colours the final frontier' which i found to be extremely interesting.
http://www.canada.com/national/story.asp?id=%7B57E7532E-9DB2-416B-A743-30A9D5589A09%7D

since then i have been debating with a friend of mine as to wether a particular nebula is the colour we had assumed it to be (judging from the hubble pictures). The nebula in question is the planetary nebula NGC 6543 shown in the link below.

http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/jpeg/NGC6543a.jpg

Can anyone tell me what possibility there is that this nebula is not the 'red' colour portrayed in this doctored image, and also if you know the reason why the color red was used at all.

Thankyou very much and i send my thanks in advance

Costas Mavroudis

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