Friday, October 15, 2010

Astrophoto Friday - Neptune with Adaptive Optics

It is Astrophoto Friday! For your enjoyment this time is the planet Neptune.


This image of Neptune was taken on 11 August 2006 with the Palomar Observatory's 200-inch Hale Telescope and its adaptive optics system. The adaptive optics system removes the blurring effects of Earth's atmosphere to produce very high resolution images.

Don Banfield of Cornell University collected and processed the data to produce this false color image. The image was recorded in three near-infrared wavelengths: "J" centered at 1.250 microns, "H" at 1.635 microns, and "Ks" at 2.150. The images were combined as red, green, and blue to create this false-color image. A wide assortment of clouds can be seen at Neptune's atmosphere. The multi-colored object passing above Neptune is one of its moons which moved during the exposures.

2 comments:

jg said...

This is soooo cool. Do you know which moon is in the picture?

Anonymous said...

It is beautiful.