NASA Neptune Triton footage features space footage from a 1989 mission by the Voyager 2 planetary probe. Some restoration work done by the agency on the NASA Neptune Triton footage has revealed, in NASA's description, the best look yet at Neptune's moon Triton.
According to Tech Times, the NASA Neptune Triton footage was captured exactly on Aug. 15, 1989. The spacecraft was reportedly making a flyby past the planet Neptune and its moon Triton. Amazingly, this was the only time that a spacecraft has ever made a trip to the Neptune system.
The BBC describes the NASA Neptune Triton footage by the Voyager 2 as close-up views of Triton's ice-covered, relatively crater-free surface.
Triton is known as Neptune's largest moon. Its orbit reportedly suggests that it may have formed elsewhere before being confined by the Neptune's gravity.
According to the BBC, Triton is the only moon in the Solar System that is that large and moving in the opposite direction to its planet's rotation.
Triton was discovered by the English amateur astronomer William Lassell in 1846.
Paul Schenk at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston reportedly worked with color filters to fix the NASA Neptune Triton footage. Through his process, he was able to create the striking Triton map and was also able to stitch images together in order to create a one-minute movie of the Voyager 2's flyby.
Schenk wrote in a blog post, "In the intervening quarter century and its many discoveries, I think we have tended to forget how strange and exotic Triton really is!"
The YouTube video of the NASA Neptune Triton flyby by the Voyager 2 was titled "Sailing Past Neptune's Moon Triton."
It was published last Thursday, Aug. 21, 2014 by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was captioned with the following:
"Sail past Neptune's moon Triton, with data obtained from NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989. The historical footage has been restored and used to construct the best-ever global color map of the strange moon."
"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."
According to Tech Times, Schenk's map has been released while another NASA spacecraft, called New Horizons, is in the preparation stages of making a similar trip to Pluto and its moons.
The size of Pluto and Triton are known to be close. Their composition are also known to be similar, both with thin atmospheres of nitrogen and surfaces reportedly covered in frozen gases like methane and carbon dioxide.
Colors in the images and movie of the NASA Neptune Triton flyby have been enhanced for contrast improvements, and the result is a first-rate rough calculation of the moon's real colors, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. on its website.
JPL said on its website, "Although a fast flyby, New Horizons' Pluto encounter on July 14, 2015, will not be a replay of Voyager but more of a sequel and a reboot, with a new and more technologically advanced spacecraft and, more importantly, a new cast of characters."
It also said, "Those characters are Pluto and its family of five known moons, all of which will be seen up close for the first time next summer."
New Horizons, said JPL, will be crossing the orbit of Neptune on Aug. 25 while on its way to Pluto.
NASA Neptune Triton flyby machine used to capture the images, Voyager 2 was launched along with its twin, Voyager 1 in 1977. Both were on mission to the outer solar systems, and in their voyage captured some of man's first and best looks at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Watch the spectacular enhanced video of Triton below.
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