The Pillars of Creation

Raw Deal
I told you it would look different! Here's why: First, and most obviously, we're looking through a blizzard of cosmic radiation and other spurious signals that we'll soon get rid of. Second, we're only looking at an image from the PC1 camera; we'll get to the images from the three WF cameras in a moment. Third, we're only looking at one of four colors of light that each of the four cameras records. (Just as a TV makes a color picture by combining red, green, and blue images, our final color image will combine images taken through different filters—more on that later.)

Finally, we're only looking at one of 32 different images that go into producing the final picture. That's because each of the four cameras takes two images through each of its four filters. Why the duplicate pictures? Let me explain.