P-34668 Range :  25 million km. ( 16 million miles ) Smallest Resolvable Feature :  45 km or 28 miles This Voyager 2 image of Neptune,  shot with a narrow angle camera,  shows the discovery of shadows in Neptune's atmosphere. The shadows cast onto deep cloud banks by smaller elevated clouds. Located at about 68 degrees south latitude, they are the first cloud shadows ever seen by Voyager on any planet. The dark regions adjacent to the small bright clouds are believed to be shadows, because they are on the side of the cloud that is opposite to the incoming sunlight and because they lengthen in places where the sun lies closer to the horizon. Estimates of the height of these discrete clouds above the  underlying cloud bank can be obtained by careful analysis of this data. ARC-1989-A89-7020

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P-34668 Range : 25 million km. ( 16 million miles ) Smallest Resolvable Feature : 45 km or 28 miles This Voyager 2 image of Neptune, shot with a narrow angle camera, shows the discovery of shadows in Neptune's atmosphere. The shadows cast onto deep cloud banks by smaller elevated clouds. Located at about 68 degrees south latitude, they are the first cloud shadows ever seen by Voyager on any planet. The dark regions adjacent to the small bright clouds are believed to be shadows, because they are on the side of the cloud that is opposite to the incoming sunlight and because they lengthen in places where the sun lies closer to the horizon. Estimates of the height of these discrete clouds above the underlying cloud bank can be obtained by careful analysis of this data. ARC-1989-A89-7020

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Summary

P-34668 Range : 25 million km. ( 16 million miles ) Smallest Resolvable Feature : 45 km or 28 miles This Voyager 2 image of Neptune, shot with a narrow angle camera, shows the discovery of shadows in Neptune's atmosphere. The shadows cast onto deep cloud banks by smaller elevated clouds. Located at about 68 degrees south latitude, they are the first cloud shadows ever seen by Voyager on any planet. The dark regions adjacent to the small bright clouds are believed to be shadows, because they are on the side of the cloud that is opposite to the incoming sunlight and because they lengthen in places where the sun lies closer to the horizon. Estimates of the height of these discrete clouds above the underlying cloud bank can be obtained by careful analysis of this data.

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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Date

23/08/1989
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Source

NASA
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Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

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