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5 celestial facts about Triton - Neptune's largest moon
Far away from our solar system is the ice giant Neptune.
The blue giant Neptune not only has six rings but also has 13 known moons, so it's no wonder it has been referenced time and again in science fiction and pop culture,
Of all of Neptune's moons, Triton is the most attractive.
With a huge diameter of 1,682 miles (2,700km) not only is the largest moon Triton of Neptune, it's the 7th largest moon and 16 largest known objects in our solar system!
Discovered by British astronomer William Lassell on October 10, 1846, Triton is so large that it was actually found weeks after the discovery of how by French astronomer Alexis Bouvard
Even so, this moon is not only large, but also has more than 99.5% of the total mass of all known celestial bodies orbiting Neptune.
Not only is a large moon, Triton also has strange and fascinating features.
Triton is named after a sea god in Greek mythology.
Officially, Triton was simply called Neptune's satellite until a second moon, Nereid, was discovered orbiting the planet in 1949.
While Neptune is named after the Roman god of the sea, Triton is named after a Greek god.
While this might be confusing at first, it's actually quite fitting, as Neptune is the Roman god equivalent to the Greek god Poseidon, who happens to be Triton's father in Greek mythology.
It doesn't stop there, however, as all of Neptune's moons are actually named after characters in Roman or Greek mythology according to the principles of the International Astronomical Union.
Triton has seasons and they are longer than you expect.
Despite the fact that Triton orbits the farthest planet in our Solar System, the sun can still sense its presence.
Using the Southern European Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, scientists confirmed the hypothesis that Triton had seasons in 2010. At that time, summer was observed to be well underway.
In the summer in Triton, the atmosphere thickens due to more direct sunlight, while in winter the atmosphere is mainly composed of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide that condenses and falls as snow.
If you don't think that's crazy then understand this - Triton's seasons last for 40 years!
So next time you're going to complain about summer's over for so long, think again!
Triton has a frozen crust.
40% of Triton that has been mapped so far is covered with a layer of frozen nitrogen.
Due to this knowledge, it has been calculated that the rest of the Triton surface is unlikely to make any difference.
While the ice is mainly made up of frozen nitrogen, it also includes frozen carbon dioxide and the usual old ice.
Triton's icy nature is the cause of its high albedo, which in other words means it reflects 60-95% of the light that reaches its surface.
For reference, our moon only reflects a small amount of 11-12% of the light.
Imagine you are standing on the surface of Neptune and seeing that the full moon is 10 times brighter than our own!
Ice volcanoes are real, and were found on Triton.
Yes, you heard right, ice volcanoes.
Triton most likely has tectonic and ongoing volcanic activity, as evidenced by rift valleys and scarring pressure ridges on the lunar surface.
This activity leads to endogenous geological processes that are then the cause of countless ice volcanoes scattered across the surface.
Technically known as cryovolcanoes, this type of volcano is not nearly as strange as you might expect.
In addition to one that spits molten lava and the other emits ice water and ammonia, ice volcanoes and lava volcanoes found on earth are almost identical in nature.
Triton has geysers that spray nitrogen into the atmosphere.
Triton not only has an ice volcano, but also has a nitrogen geyser.
On Earth, geysers can be found in volcanic areas, where molten magma heats a natural lake, creating hot springs.
Sometimes underground water is so heated by magma that it turns into steam.
Triton's geysers are a little different, because instead of steam and boiling water, they spit out nitrogen.
Triton's nitrogen jets are found in its sub-sun point, where the sun's rays are most concentrated.
In this region, the frozen nitrogen covering the moon was melted by the heat of the sun's rays to such a temperature that not only did nitrogen begin to melt below the surface, but it also began to boil!
This steam nitrogen then accumulates so much that it gushes out through the frozen crust, splashing nitrogen and ammonia onto the moon's atmosphere!
However, that's not all: there is a theory that these eruptions could last up to one earth year!
In short
These five facts are just some of the many fascinating and bizarre things we know about Triton, and most of them were obtained from a Voyager 2 flight in 1989.
If you think about it, we learned all this from the device that was available in 1989, when your average home computer used floppy disks to store up to 1.2mb of data!
Just imagine what we would find out if we sent another mission to the edge of our solar system!
