And it was able to take such good photographs because of a fairly rare planetary alignment that allowed for three gravitational slingshots.
The last time this happened, Thomas Jefferson was president, and he blew it.
Counterpoint: Neptune is neat but there are much more interesting things to study in the solar system than a gas giant. A lander on Titan would drive more science than a new photo of the cloud tops of Neptune.
Why not both? For the cost of one aircraft carrier, we could send probes to every planet.
Woah there cowboy,
We’re still closer to rival monkey tribes hurling our shit at one another as it exits our anuses than we are some benevolent civilization with noble pursuits like knowledge.
Don’t worry, a few more pointless world wars and population decimations born out of glorified sociopathy, and our species might actually develop admirable priorities beyond tribal resource hoarding from the ashes.
When humans are no longer interested in keeping up with some Kardashian descendant, perhaps we will have stumbled into an age of reason. Seems like as good an indicator as any.
Don’t worry, a few more pointless world wars and population decimations born out of glorified sociopathy, and our species might actually develop admirable priorities beyond tribal resource hoarding from the ashes.
Tbf, even in the Star Trek timeline earth had to go through WWIII nuclear devastation that nearly wiped out all life on earth to even take the first steps on that track
NASA sets program budgets in collaboration with the scientific community.
How do you propose we get society to stop spending money on the military?
I’ve been absolutely fascinated with Titan ever since Huygens. It’s low key my best bet for “nearest extraterrestrial life”. I can’t wait for Dragonfly to land a decade from now!
there are many things besides pixel count.
i bet it was a hell of a 0.6mp camera to be able to snap that good of a pic of a planet literally in the middle of space
Probably a very good lens. If there’s no digital zoom and little digital correction, then quality can be quite good despite low pixel count.
I mean, does Neptune have oil???
We might need a little more to finish destroying our sole, communal habitat. Anything worth doing is worth doing well!
it’s got diamond rain, man.
Keep that shit down, or the US will have to “bring freedom” to Neptune.
Diamonds aren’t actually worth that much. It has a very troubled history involving exploitation and slavery among other disturbing subjects. The price is kept artificially high by a huge cartel and good marketing saying artificial diamonds aren’t as good as the “real” diamonds. In reality artificial diamonds are better in every way, but I guess it’s the slavery that adds that je ne sais quoi.
And on top of that we’ve only seen a false color version of that image for a long time, leading us to believe that it’s a much deeper blue than Uranus.
The Uranus images are also very poor.
https://www.planetary.org/articles/1210-revisiting-uranus-with-voyager-2
