Thursday, March 1, 2007

Moons of a Gas Giant - Neptune's Triton - Tessa





Triton is the largest moon of Neptune. The distance to get to Triton is 154 498 607 660 km, and it would take .9495651344990 lightyears. It has a diameter of 2,700 kilometres. Triton was discovered by William Lassell, in 1846, only a month after Neptune itself had been discovered. The moon is colder than any other object in the Solar System with a surface temperature of -235° C. It has a very thin atmosphere, but nitrogen ice particles can form thin clouds a few kilometres above its surface.

Triton is the only big satellite in the solar system to revolve around a planet that is rotating in the opposite direction. It has a density of 2.066 grams per cubic cm, which means Triton has more rock in it’s inside than the icy satellites of Saturn and Uranus. The high density has lead some scientists to believe that Neptune captured Triton while it travelled through space some time ago. It is also believed that tidal heating could have melted Triton, and that it may have been liquid until Neptune had captured it. It has also has enormous cracks on its surface, which spew out nitrogen gas and dust particles into the atmosphere.

Image from -
http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/BrowseTheSolarSystem/triton.html

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