Post Encounter Images of Triton Target Name:   Triton Spacecraft:   Voyager 2 Produced by:   Ted Stryk Copyright:  Public Domain Date Released:  13 November 1999

• Neptune's Moon Triton

This set of images shows the best views of Neptune's moon Triton taken by Voyager 2 as the spacecraft withdrew from the Neptune system on August 25, 1989. The top four images were constructed from various color image bands as Voyager receded from Triton.

The third image from the left is sharper than the other four, because it was taken with the Narrow Angle Camera, with Triton filling two thirds of the frame. The thin crescent first image, while much closer, spanned about a quarter of the frame. The second image was somewhat smaller, and the last was very small. The first of the four images was composed of Blue, Green, and Orange filter images. The second utilized Violet, Green, and Orange Filtered images. In both composites, the Orange image was of poorer quality. In the fourth image, no orange was available, and the green and blue images were badly smeared, though somewhat salvageable. A clear filtered image (also smeared) was substituted for orange. They were combined and used as a color overlay for a slightly overexposed, but sharp clear filtered view. The third image is composed of a Violet and a Green wide-angle image. Like all the images in the first and second composites, and like the images used to color the fourth composite, these images were underexposed. However, they were very sharp. The orange image came from a poor quality wide angle orange image. The resulting color image was combined with a well exposed clear filter image to provide the detail

The Narrow Angle images used in these mosaics were the first obtained after closest approach, with the exception of a single clear filter image obtained while the disk was about twice as big as what could be framed in the camera's field of view. It is very noisy, and by far the worst underexposure of them all, and could not be processed to the point in which the whole image could be made presentable. However, a few sections were salvaged. The first (lower left) was binned to make up for noisiness and sharpened. It was then merged with the color data from the third image above. A cloud can be seen near the limb. To its right is an image of the cloud that has not been as heavily processed. The cloud itself is better presented, as it was far brighter than the surrounding area and hence more securely detected. Its shadow can be faintly made out to its right.

The next two images are the same, but one to the right was merged with color data. The image is towards the center of the crescent, the brightest area, in which white spots can be seen. Although a few of them may be impact craters, this area, as most of the crescent, is over the south polar cap, and thus frost covered, and the appearance of this area most closely resembles the cantaloupe terrain seen on the other hemisphere before closest approach. The final image (lower right) hints of surface topography near the terminator. It seems it is one of the more rugged parts of Triton. The large, foreshortened circular feature slightly below the center of the image is a dimple similar those found in the cantaloupe terrain. The other features are too ambiguous to determine whether or not they are of the same nature.