Since the Webb telescope has started delivering pictures, I've seen references to their "false colors" or "fake colors". NASA has used the term:
This false-color mosaic is made of 72 exposures over a 32-hour test. Note: 6-pointed diffraction spikes unique to Webb around the bright stars & a background full of galaxies. Webb will #UnfoldTheUniverse with its first full-color images in just 1 week! https://t.co/LaJjK8v3Bd
— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) July 6, 2022
I don't like it.
As I understand it, the Webb captures a much wider portion of the spectrum than do our human eyes. So if the images reflected the spectrum we could see, i.e., were in "real colors", we wouldn't see a lot of the interesting phenomena. So NASA uses what I'd call a translator program to convert all the data the telescope has captured into colors humans can perceive. The program is true to our perceptions--we see longer light waves as blue, with "ultraviolet" designating the waves which are too long for us to see; we see shorter light waves as red, with "infrared" designating the waves which are too short for us to see. So the results of the translation have the infrared waves showing as red, the ultraviolet as blue.
Whenever we convert phenomena into colors on the printed page, we're dealing in "false colors", not reality. That's true whether we're dealing with red states and blue states, or starlight.
Just as translators of the Iliad try to be faithful to the original Greek in their presentation of the text in modern American English, so the NASA scientist try to be faithful to the data their telescope has captured in presenting it to us. In neither case do we get the full richness of the reality, but the best effort of the translators.
