Voyager 2 flew by Neptune and took incredible images of the planet. It captured images of Neptune’s rings and its Great Dark Spot. These images were taken through green and orange filters on Voyager 2’s narrow-angle camera at a range of 4.4 million miles from the planet.
On August 25th, 1989, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft flew closely by Neptune. This event marked the first time humanity had a close view of the eighth planet in our solar system. It also concluded the Voyager mission’s Grand Tour of the four giant planets in our solar system – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Since then, no other spacecraft has visited Neptune.
Ed Stone, a professor of physics at Caltech and Voyager’s project scientist since 1975 said that “The Voyager planetary program really was an opportunity to show the public what science is all about. Every day we learned something new.” Voyager 2 revealed a planet wrapped in teal- and cobalt-colored bands of clouds that looked like a blue-hued sibling to Jupiter and Saturn. The blue color indicated the presence of methane. A massive storm was discovered and named the “Great Dark Spot,” similar to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Additionally, six new moons and four rings were discovered.
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The end of the Neptune flyby marked the start of the Voyager Interstellar Mission. This mission is still ongoing today, 42 years after its launch. Both Voyager 2 and its twin Voyager 1 (which also flew by Jupiter and Saturn) continue to send back information from the outer reaches of our solar system. At the time of its encounter with Neptune, Voyager 2 was about 2.9 billion miles (4.7 billion kilometers) away from Earth. Today it is about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) away from us. Meanwhile, Voyager 1 is moving faster and is now about 13 billion miles (21 billion kilometers) away from Earth.
