A scientist has created a color map of Triton, Neptune's biggest moon. The original image was taken in August 1989 by the Voyager 2 spacecraft during a close flyby of the moon.
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched the Voyager 2 in August 1977 and the space probe is currently one of the only few most-distant human objects from the Earth.
Voyager 2's closest approach to Neptune and Triton occurred on Aug. 25, 1989. The spacecraft was able to gather relevant information about Neptune and Triton, and also took images of the space bodies. To mark the 25th anniversary of the spacecraft's close encounter with Neptune and Triton, Paul Schenk, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, released a restored and much enhanced image of Triton and constructed a global color map of the same.
"In the intervening quarter century and its many discoveries, I think we have tended to forget how strange and exotic Triton really is! Its effective surface age may be a little as 10 million years, clearly implying that active geology is going on today," says Schenk in a blogpost.
The recreated Triton map has a resolution of 600 meters or 1970 feet per pixel. Schenk has enhanced the colors in the image to highlight the contrasts. However, the colors are quite close to the original and natural colors of Triton. Voyager 2 had perceived the colors slightly differently from the human eye and the color map was made by deploying green, orange and blue filter images.
The improvements to the map include better color processing and updates to the exact position of the locations. The feature details have also been sharpened by getting rid of the blurring effects by the camera.
The new Triton map has been inspired by NASA's expected New Horizons meeting with Pluto that will occur in a year from now in July 2015.
Aug. 25 is a landmark day for the Voyager 2 mission as it commemorates the two-year anniversary of Voyager 1 reaching space.
