The closest photo of Neptune was released on August 19. He took the photo on August 25, 1989.
Neptune is 2.8 billion miles (4.5 billion kilometers) from the sun and was photographed by NASA’s Voyager 2 mission on August 25, 1989.
Voyager 2, NASA’s longest-running mission, explored Neptune during a historic encounter on August 25, 1989, sending back humanity’s first close-up images of the planet.
On August 25, 1989, 35 years ago, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft made a close flyby of Neptune. It gave humanity its 1st close-up of our solar system’s 8th planet! Read more about this historic flyby of the planet Neptune at:
📸 NASA/JPL-Caltech. pic.twitter.com/qJpmKvR5Vp
— EarthSky (@earthskyscience) August 25, 2024
Why is this photo so important?
Only one spacecraft has ever visited the eighth and most distant planet from the sun.
On August 25, 1989, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft took the first close-up images of Neptune. This is among the last photos taken before the end of Voyager 2’s “Grand Tour” of the planets, and has become one of the most iconic. It revealed Neptune as a deep blue, which colored the public’s perception of the planet for decades. (That is, until a reprocessing of the Voyager 2 images earlier this year revealed that Neptune’s true color was a much lighter blue-green.)
The original Voyager 2 images were taken in false color and using filters. This is a standard technique used by planetary astronomers. In this case, blue and green filters were used along with one that passes light at a wavelength absorbed by methane gas. According to scientists, hydrogen and helium dominate Neptune’s atmosphere, but methane gives it its blue appearance by absorbing red light. The filters make the methane appear dark blue in this image, but also reveal a translucent layer of haze around the planet. The bright-red edge around Neptune is caused by haze that scatters sunlight at higher altitudes, above most of the methane.
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