Massive Star VY Canis Majoris – Visible Light

About the colours

This image is a composite of many separate exposures made by the WFPC2 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope using several different filters. Three filters were used to sample various wavelength ranges in each instrument. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F410M (Strömgren v) Green: F547M (Strömgren y) Red: F656N (H-alpha) + F1042M

About the data

The Hubble image was created from HST data from proposals: 7304 : R. Humphreys, K. Davidson, T. Jones, and R. Gehrz (University of Minnesota) and J. Krautter and T. Szeifert (Landessternwarte, Heidelberg) 10262 : R. Humphreys and T. Jones (University of Minnesota), G. Herbig (University of Hawaii), and G. Wallerstein (University of Washington).