Photograph #1 (August 2006)

Crescent Neptune and Triton

We are able to send a spacecraft more than 2 1/2 billion miles to photograph Neptune and its moon, Triton.

Can we survive long enough to bridge the distances or consciousness between planets and stars and galaxies and nations and religious/political/ social differences?

Photo credit: Voyager 2, NASA

Just as light and gravity extend forever, connecting galaxies, stars and planets across the universe, so our consciousness extends everywhere and everywhen.

- Daniel J. Benor, MD
 How Can I Heal What Hurts

Gliding silently through the outer Solar System, the Voyager 2 spacecraft camera captured Neptune and Triton together in crescent phase in 1989. The above picture of the gas giant planet and its cloudy moon (seen faintly at bottom of photo) was taken from behind just after closest approach. It could not have been taken from Earth because Neptune never shows a crescent phase to sunward Earth. The unusual vantage point also robs Neptune of its familiar blue hue, as sunlight seen from here is scattered forward, and so is reddened like the setting Sun. Neptune has several dark rings, and emits more light than it receives from the Sun.