The moon of Uranus known as Miranda has finally appeared in a new form. Images of the satellite were obtained on January 24, 1986, during the flight by the planet of the Voyager 2 probe. During the survey, the spacecraft was at a distance of 81,500 km from the surface of Uranus, the probe managed to take photographs of the five largest moons of the planet.
Miranda is the closest to the planet and the smallest of the five major moons of Uranus, with a diameter of only 480 km. In order to create a full-fledged satellite image, NASA editors had to combine 9 separate images. The main body of the photo consists of seven high-resolution images taken during the Voyager approach. The rest of the images, less detailed, were used to fill in the gaps.
It turned out that the surface of Miranda consists of two strikingly different basic terrain types. One half of the moon is an ancient, highly cratered hilly area with relatively uniform albedo (reflectivity). The other half is much more 'young' by cosmic standards, has a complex relief characterized by sets of light and dark stripes, ledges and ridges.
The final image processing was done by the US Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona, USA.
Sources: NASA
