Muireann,
Did you know that teachers who register events on spaceweek.ie are sent a special image, taken with our telescope at BCO, with a classroom resources to support it. Last year’s picture was one of the Messier objects and the supporting document is here.
Of course, this may spark discussion about astronomy images, and are they “real.” Some telescopes (I’m looking at you Hubble and Webb) are able to detect light that is different to the light that our eyes can see, so, no, not every astronomy image is the same as what we would see.