Despina eclipses and transits Neptune

Filed under pretty pictures, many worlds, amateur image processing, Neptune, Neptune's moons, Voyager 1 and 2

Go Back

This view of Despina eclipsing and transiting Neptune is composed of four frames captured nine minutes apart on August 24, 1989 from 20:00 to 20:27 through blue, orange, violet, and green filters.

NASA / JPL / Ted Stryk, Roane State CC

Despina, 148 kilometers across, is a tiny moon of Neptune located within its ring system and discovered by Voyager 2 in 1989 as the spacecraft approached for its flyby. The images were originally captured to study the colors of Neptune's clouds; the fact that Despina and its shadow were visible in the images was discovered by amateur image processor Ted Stryk in 2009.

The full-size image is a 16-bit PNG.

Copyright holder: Ted Stryk

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Contact us to request publication permission from the copyright holder. Original image data dated on or about August 24, 1989