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Anonymous
The 'flares' aren't faked, they are a natural lens artifact due to the extremely long exposure time. The technical term is 'blooming.'
The color isn't fake per se, its just not what we would be able to see naturally with our eyes. Typically exposures are taken in separate colors, like red green blue, and sometimes at different wavelengths, like hydrogen alpha, and then composited in a program like Photoshop. Whether or not this is 'doctoring' is up for debate. It raises questions about what the 'real' color of something is, and if we should judge what is 'real' by the measuring stick of our own (comparably) limited eyesight. We can only 'see' in a very narrow band of wavelengths, while most objects, such as this nebula, radiate in many wavelengths other than the visual. Even then, as noted above, our 'apeture,' that is the size of our pupils, is incredibly small, which limits our experience of 'color.'
Instruments like the HST allow us to literally see the unseen, as though our eyes were as powerful as it (and we could take long exposures :P); whether or not it is 'fake' or 'doctored' is debatable.
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