It seems to be the best image we have of an exoplanet, but as with many of them, it looks like it's overexposed and oversaturated rather than how it should actually look (I get it, probably not a priority for the astronomers). I have no idea how to edit images, but it seems like something that's possible to fix.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_Indi_Ab#/media/File:Epsilon_Indi_Ab_(MIRI_Image).png.png)
Credit goes to "NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Elisabeth Matthews (MPIA) – https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2024/127/01J01FZVQBX30APWZ3W2VSG1V0"
Is it possible to improve the image of Epsilon Indi A b?
byu/Human-Question6210 inspace
2 Comments
Nearly 12 light years away and you want it to be a perfect image that looks exactly like an iPhone photograph of the house next door? You think the images released aren’t as good as they can possibly get them? Do you expect to make out individual features on the surface? Resolution down to the sub-meter level like an orbiting spy satellite?
Most deep space images aren’t really anything you can just look at and see anything detailed. Every pixel represents hundreds of kilometers at distances like that. The image linked is from a mid-infrared camera, converted to appear in colors we can see. What defines “overexposed and oversaturated” when the original isn’t even visible to us? Any modifications in that aspect are to an arbitrary degree just so we have something to look at, with computers doing the real analysis these days, and anything to make it how it should “actually look” as you put it would be just artistic rendering.
> Is it possible to improve the image of Epsilon Indi A b?
Sure, first we need to make a telescope with a primary mirror that’s *orders of magnitude* larger than any ever made, because [diffraction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction-limited_system)