NASA footage of Neptune's largest moon, Triton, has been restored and re-colored, making for a new, informative take on humanity's only encounter with the unique celestial body.
According to a NASA blog post published Thursday, the map was created by Paul Schenk, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, from the Voyager spacecraft's historic fly-by on August 25, 1989.
"In 1989, most of the northern hemisphere was in darkness and unseen by Voyager," the organization wrote.
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"The new Triton map has a resolution of 1,970 feet (600 meters) per pixel. The colors have been enhanced to bring out contrast but are a close approximation to Triton's natural colors. Voyager's 'eyes' saw in colors slightly different from human eyes, and this map was produced using orange, green, and blue filter images."
In addition to the new map,
Space.com noted that there is also a video of the newly revamped footage.
Triton is one of Neptune's 14 moons, which number more than planets in our solar system. It is not only the largest of the moons, but is slightly larger than Pluto, the former ninth planet from the sun that was demoted from its full planet status in recent years. It is now known as a dwarf planet.
NASA said that Voyager's short encounter was extremely valuable, because it "discovered atmospheric plumes on Triton, making it one of the known active bodies in the outer solar system, along with objects such as Jupiter's moon Io and Saturn's moon Enceladus."
Because of the plumes, scientists have predicted that, "Tidal heating has likely melted the interior of Triton, producing the volcanoes, fractures and other geological features that Voyager saw on that bitterly cold, icy surface."
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