Proteus

I continue to toy with Voyager's underexposed but highest resolution image of Neptune's second largest moon, Proteus.  I think this version may be the best approximation of how it actually appears.  Be very careful with feature identification.  In once sense, the features visible are real.  However, the fainter features  are hard to interpret.   The image was so badly underexposed that Voyager only barely detected these features.  Hence, a crater might appear as a "u" shape" or even an ambiguous blip because the higher contrast areas (the side that was in shadow, for instance) but lower contrast features and craters under high solar illumination are lost or nearly totally lost.  However, some craters, including the large one in the upper right, and some grooves/fractures are visible.  Given that Proteus is in roughly the same size class as Mimas (moon of Saturn) and Miranda (moon of Uranus), it is remarkable how primitive and irregularly shaped it is.

 Here is the second best image, the lone color shot of Proteus. 

Processed Images Copyright Ted Stryk, Raw Data Courtesy NASA/JPL

Phobos 2 over Mars

Here is a view of Mars from thermoscan on Phobos 2 in 1989.  This shows some of the fractured terrain near the Valles Marineris canyon network on Mars.

  Data Courtesy the Russian Academy of Sciences.   Processed Image Copyright Ted Stryk

I'm Still Here...

Things have been quite eventful, so I have had little time for image processing lately.  Eventually I do plan to resume regular posting.  In the mean time, here is a view of Io from Galileo, taken on August 12, 1999 during the spacecraft's 22nd orbit of Jupiter.

Processed Image Copyright Ted Stryk, Raw Data Courtesy NASA/JPL