New Horizons spots Triton

Today the New Horizons team released photos captured by their high-resolution camera of the Neptune system, in which both Neptune and Triton were visible. Before you get too excited about the first observations of Triton since Voyager 2 flew by two decades ago, I should mention that New Horizons was really far away from Neptune at the time the photo was taken -- 3.75 billion kilometers away. To put this in context, New Horizons was actually more twice as far from Neptune than it was from Earth when it took the photo. That's really really far. So if you are hoping for a new photo of Triton's famed cantaloupe terrain, you're going to be disappointed.

What you should be excited about is the fact that New Horizons successfully separated Triton's light from Neptune's; according to the New Horizons release, the planet was 180 times as bright as the moon, as seen from the spacecraft. Here's the photo:

Another good reason for New Horizons to photograph Triton, no matter how far away it is, is because Triton is the closest analog to Pluto and other Kuiper belt objects that we've ever seen; it's a chance for New Horizons to whet its appetite observing something with similar properties to its eventual science targets.

Another good reason is because New Horizons will be doing lots of observations of Pluto and other Kuiper belt objects from very, very far away, and taking this photo served as practice for the long exposures and steady tracking of faint and distant objects that will occupy it for so much of its primary mission. The steady tracking meant New Horizons could study Triton's light separately from Neptune's, much as it will eventually separate the faint light of Nix and Hydra from Pluto and Charon's, and possibly even study other, undiscovered satellites of the as-yet-undiscovered Kuiper belt objects that New Horizons goes on to investigate.