Maybe I misread your statement "Using a telescope to look at things, one only sees a black and white image". Certainly you can see color when looking at planets (mars, jupiter, saturn). But more importantly: you can see M42 in color with a telescope and eyes, it doesn't need to be a camera or film. If your point is that it's hard for your retina to detect a rich color spectrum from distant objects without either magnification or time-averaging, sure, but that's not how your comment reads.
Before you jump to "bonkers" maybe give the people you reply to some credit- I'm an amateur astronomer with facts at his disposal.
> Before you jump to "bonkers" maybe give the people you reply to some credit- I'm an amateur astronomer with facts at his disposal.
As am I, and any time I use an eye piece, it is nothing but b&w for DSOs even for something as bright as Orion's Nebula. The spirit of the conversation is if people can see the true color the way images from large telescopes posted in articles like this. They cannot. You take the reaction from the average person that has only seen processed images after looking through a telescope for the first time, and they will almost always have a bit of disappointment in their voice. I have taken my scope to rooftop bars and let patrons look through at whatever can be seen at the time. I have yet to do this and not meet someone that's never looked through a telescope with their own eyes--which is the point of my effort.
I understand. The way you wrote it it sounded like you were implying that the scope itself strips the color spectrum ("black and white") when really it's just the light is so faint that our cones don't really register color while our rods can easily register bright white light. (i work with weird people who don't like false color and instead look at the image as a series of monochromatic filtered images because you can see more detail that way)
For demonstration, I always attach a DSLR to prime focus and display Live View.
Before you jump to "bonkers" maybe give the people you reply to some credit- I'm an amateur astronomer with facts at his disposal.