The images are of what's actually there ... but not what you'd see with the naked eye ... they're largely in various parts of the infra-red spectrum ... lower frequencies than our eyes can pick up.
So in one sense, as images, they're not real ... in that you wouldn't see what's in them even if you strolled across the vastness of space to take a look with your own eyes ... however, the Human eye isn't the be all and end all of perception so they're a genuine rendering of what's there ... just not what we'd see.
K
