A Colorful Landscape

A Cartoon Landscape



We have seen that an image can be composed of many different colors. By placing a filter over the image we can restrict what kind of light makes it to our eye.

The use of filters can be very helpful to scientists. When we use the correct filter we can enhance a particular feature and mute the others. Sometimes this makes the feature we are interested in easier to study.

When you observe an object through a filter you must remember that you are not seeing all the information. When you look at the landscape above with a red filter you are lead to believe that there is only one kind of tree on this hillside. When you use a yellow filter you also think there is only one kind of tree, but it is a differet kind. If you want to understand the entire landscape you must remember to include the information you gather from each filtered image.

Now that you understand a little bit about how filters work, let's make a filter wheel and use it to view the Crab Nebula!



The Red Landscape Filters Lesson Making a Filter Wheel