Galaxy Zoo Talk

artifact? que?

  • kaiyosh by kaiyosh

    Hi galaxy zoo! Im new here, and new to astronomy. I keep seeing the term "artifact" and would love it if someone could specify what is meant by that in this picture and in general! thanks!

    Posted

  • ElisabethB by ElisabethB moderator

    Hi kaiyosh and welcome to the Zoo

    Artifact just means something that is fabricated. Like here something went wrong with the filters and/or the imaging of this picture. The colors are not the real colors of this star. And the center is also not real. Other artifacts can be diffraction spikes caused by bright stars in an image (wiki : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction_spike).

    Hope this helps a bit !

    Happy hunting ! 😄

    Posted