Hubble Makes Millionth Observation

sfcrazy wrote in with an article about the Hubble telescope. From the article: "NASA's Hubble Space Telescope crossed another milestone in its space odyssey of exploration and discovery. On Monday, July 4, the Earth-orbiting observatory logged its one millionth science observation during a search for water in an exoplanet's atmosphere 1,000 light-years away."

Re:Artist's Concept

[lucian1900]

Because the actual image isn't in wavelenghts you can see, has crap resolution and often results indirectly from other information.

Re:Artist's Concept

[Lord Crc]

Why does it seem like every time I read an article about space imaging, there is an artist's rendition, instead of an actual rendition of the image?

The actual image would most likely be of the star itself, and usually is just a few pixels wide. Not a lot for people to look at.

However by observing those pixels over a long time they may see changes in the color / spectrum indicating the vapors in the atmosphere of the planet when it passes in front of the star.

Here's [nasa.gov] a Hubble image of an actual exoplanet, 25 light years away. The exoplanet they're imaging in the story here is 1000 light years away...