ABSTRACT
Photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope are among our most familiar contemporary images. One of the best-known Hubble photographs, and among the earliest to feature this look, is the spectacular color image of the Eagle Nebula produced by astronomer Jeff Hester in 1995. In a Hubble photograph of The Spire, a second area of gas and dust clouds in the Eagle Nebula, color assignments were changed because this feature was observed in different spectra, for scientific reasons. The authors compare photo finish images to scientific photography, such as infrared and ultraviolet images. Like photo finish photographs, the Hubble photographs do not show us what human eyes would see but they have evidentiary value about what is photographed. Non-scientists may be attracted to the Hubble photographs for roughly the same reason scientists are: because of their desire to know more about what objects in outer space are like. Thus construed, the Hubble photographs are aesthetic objects.
