Construction of the Great Observatories M101 image

These steps combine data from NASA's three Great Observatories into a single colour composite image. At the left are separate images from three different regions of infrared light from the Spitzer Space Telescope, three images from different regions of visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope, and three different regions of x-ray light from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The three images from each observatory are combined into a single black and white image representing the light from that part of the spectrum. Each of these images is assigned a colour: red for infrared light, yellow for visible light, and blue for x-ray light. These three separate colour images can blend together to see the light from a very broad range of light energy in one image.