I probably should mentioned it, but on the telescope there is a mirror and so the light comes from the object and reflects back off the mirror into a CCD Camera, which looks at the light intensity. In order to get enough light, we have to take 20 or 30 pictures which we then overlay on each other and their collective light makes the bright picture you see here. If I want to make a color picture I have to do this with a blue filter, a red filter and visible light filter and those three filters are then combined to make the color image.