I find them amazing to look at as desktop backgrounds, but it seems hard to find actual high quality images that are suitable for 4k monitors. I save all the ones I do find but usually they're low quality images optimized for mobile.
What is the difference between a portrait of a nebula and a photograph of a nebula?
One difference could be that a portrait could also refer to a painting, but I doubt there is some painter module attached to Hubble, knowing it is essentially a big camera in space, what makes this a portrait?
'Portrait' also leaves room for this being an artistic render, but I also doubt that somehow. My question is more about: why use the word 'portrait' when it leaves so much room for interpretation. Is it about humanising nebulae?
What distinguishes a portrait is that it is a representation of a single subject. Personally I would add a corollary that there is generally an expectation of some artistic merit or high fidelity, so I think there's a subjective element to the appropriateness of the term. The OED has:
1.1 A representation or impression of someone or something in language or on film or television.
‘the writer builds up a fascinating portrait of a community’
A picture is taken, a portrait is drawn. Maybe the lenses are broken and now Hubble makes portraits using AI and ML because it's cooler.
Or maybe is just press exagerration.
