Picture credits

Every image on this site, where it came from, and what was done to it before you saw it.

There are two kinds of picture here and the difference matters. Some are output from this site's own renderer — the same engine the Universe Tuner runs, captured from a deterministic universe. They are model output and they illustrate what the model does. Nothing in them was measured by an instrument.

The rest are real observations, released by the missions that made them, and used here under the terms those missions publish. Every one states its creator, the licence basis for using it, and what this site did to the file. False colour in an astronomical image is a data-presentation choice made by the people who released it, not a photograph of what a colour would look like — so where a plate is colour-mapped, the mapping is named.

Made by the renderer

Deterministic captures from the Universe Tuner. Reuse them with attribution to Break the Universe — but do not present them as telescope imagery, because they are not.

Three product-rendered universes: a web of galaxies, matter racing outward, and bright matter collapsing into dense knots.

universe-atlas-v1

Credit: Renderer-native image: Break the Universe
Licence basis: Original product-rendered media. Reuse with Break the Universe attribution.
What we changed: Three deterministic URL-schema-v2 universes (ours, runaway expansion, black-hole collapse) captured from the production renderer. Interface chrome was excluded; scenes were center-cropped, separated by rules, resized, and compressed to AVIF/WebP. No generative imagery was used.
Alternative text: Three product-rendered universes: a web of galaxies, matter racing outward, and bright matter collapsing into dense knots.

Reviewed 2026-08-27

Observed

Mission and observatory releases, reproduced with the full credit each one asks for. No endorsement by any of these organisations is implied or claimed.

Oval all-sky Planck map mottled blue, yellow, and orange, showing tiny temperature differences in the cosmic microwave background.

planck-cmb

Credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration
Licence basis: ESA Standard Licence: educational, editorial, or informational use with full credit; no endorsement implied.
What we changed: Official false-colour all-sky CMB temperature map as supplied; padded to 16:9, resized, and compressed. Scientific colour mapping and pixel relationships were not altered.
Alternative text: Oval all-sky Planck map mottled blue, yellow, and orange, showing tiny temperature differences in the cosmic microwave background.

Reviewed 2026-08-27Original release

Webb deep field filled with thousands of galaxies, bright diffraction-spiked stars, and thin curved gravitationally lensed arcs.

webb-smacs-0723

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Licence basis: NASA/STScI public-release image used editorially and informationally with the complete supplied credit; no endorsement implied.
What we changed: Official NIRCam representative-colour composite as supplied; padded to 16:9, resized, and compressed. The original filter-to-colour mapping was retained.
Alternative text: Webb deep field filled with thousands of galaxies, bright diffraction-spiked stars, and thin curved gravitationally lensed arcs.

Reviewed 2026-08-27Original release

bullet-cluster

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; near-infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; processing: NASA/STScI/J. DePasquale
Licence basis: Chandra/NASA public-release composite used editorially and informationally with the complete supplied credit; no endorsement implied.
What we changed: Official multiwavelength and lensing-mass composite as supplied; padded to 16:9, resized, and compressed. The published data-layer colours were retained.
Alternative text: Bullet Cluster composite with many galaxies, pink X-ray gas, and blue lensing-derived mass regions offset from the gas.

Reviewed 2026-08-27Original release

Cassiopeia A supernova remnant: a tangled circular shell coloured to map silicon, sulfur, calcium, iron, and high-energy X-rays.

cassiopeia-a-elements

Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO
Licence basis: Chandra material released under NASA media guidance; factual educational/editorial use with credit; no endorsement implied.
What we changed: Official Chandra element map as supplied; padded to 16:9, resized, and compressed. Published colours remain silicon red, sulfur yellow, calcium green, iron purple, and blast-wave/high-energy X-rays blue.
Alternative text: Cassiopeia A supernova remnant: a tangled circular shell coloured to map silicon, sulfur, calcium, iron, and high-energy X-rays.

Reviewed 2026-08-27Original release

The machine-readable version of everything on this page lives in /media/manifest.json, which is also what the build pipeline and the tests read. If a credit here and a credit in an essay ever disagree, the manifest is the one that is right.