Originally posted by Rachel Lense on Bluesky:
I made this Pride flag using only NASA images and our team thought it would be cool to share on social (I work on the NASA heliophysics communications team), but it’s getting all sorts of hate on the bird app and Fbook. Thought y’all might be more appreciative of it here. ☺️🏳️🌈💖
They’re turning the freaking solar system gay
This is gorgeous 😍 thank you for sharing!
Cool, sure, but how many of these are actual color? I’m guessing 2 but it probably depends on definition (does contrast adjustment count if hue is retained?)
Edit - Alt text found in original post:
A pride flag with every color band represented by a NASA image. White is Earth clouds, pink is aurora, blue is the Sun in a specific wavelength, brown is Jupiter clouds, black is the Hubble deep field, red is the top of sprites[1], orange is a Mars crater, yellow is the surface of Io, green is a lake with algae, blue is Neptune, and purple is the Crab Nebula in a specific wavelength.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(lightning)#/media/File:Upperatmoslight1.jpg
Surprisingly many: white, pink, red, orange, green (probably) and yellow. (The well-known Neptune image is false color; Hubble deep-field is IR but that is redshifted so IDK, may be “real” color too.) Too bad white, pink and red are Earth’s atmospheric phenomena, of which only the aurora is really space-related, and green is just a satellite photo. Still, within NASA’s scope I guess, and better than “artist’s impressions”, which is all we have for non-solar-system bodies’ surfaces; or pictures of NASA-made objects.
I guess you could say since earth is part of the solar system, the earth phenomena are space related (it’s all about diversity anyway, why not include algae?). Plus what amateur astrophysicist hasn’t had to deal with a cloudy night ruining a night if star gazing?