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Range : 4 million km (2.5 million miles) Already-intriquing patterns of unknown origin appear on the surgace of Neptune's largest satellite, Trition, in this image from Voyager 2. Voyager images show that Trition's diameter is about 2,720 km (1,690 miles), and that it is one of the brightest objects in the solar system, reflecting about 70 percent of the sunlight that strikes it. THis is the hemisphere of Triton that always faces away from Neptune. The south pole is near the botton of the image. Triton's rotation axis is tilted so that the latitude at the center of the disk is 55 degrees south. Dark regions at the top of the disk extend from roughly the equator to beyond 20 degrees north. The margin between the bright and dark regions varies with longitude around the satellite. The gray, featureless area just to the right of the center of the disk is due to a reseau (reticule mark) in the camera. ARC-1989-A89-7012
Summary
Range : 4 million km (2.5 million miles) Already-intriquing patterns of unknown origin appear on the surgace of Neptune's largest satellite, Trition, in this image from Voyager 2. Voyager images show that Trition's diameter is about 2,720 km (1,690 miles), and that it is one of the brightest objects in the solar system, reflecting about 70 percent of the sunlight that strikes it. THis is the hemisphere of Triton that always faces away from Neptune. The south pole is near the botton of the image. Triton's rotation axis is tilted so that the latitude at the center of the disk is 55 degrees south. Dark regions at the top of the disk extend from roughly the equator to beyond 20 degrees north. The margin between the bright and dark regions varies with longitude around the satellite. The gray, featureless area just to the right of the center of the disk is due to a reseau (reticule mark) in the camera.
In 1977, Voyager 1 and 2 started their one-way journey to the end of the solar system and beyond, now traveling a million miles a day. Jimmy Carter was president when NASA launched two probes from Cape Canaveral. Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were initially meant to explore Jupiter, Saturn, and their moons. They did that. But then they kept going at a rate of 35,000 miles per hour. Each craft bears an object that is a record, both dubbed the Golden Records. They were the product of Carl Sagan and his team who produced a record that would, if discovered by aliens, represent humanity and "communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials."
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