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NASA's Voyager 2―the only spacecraft to fly past Neptune and Triton―found surface temperatures of -391degrees Fahrenheit (-235 degrees Celsius). During its 1989 flyby, Voyager 2 also found Triton has active geysers, making it one of the few geologically active moons in our solar system.
Measurements of Triton's surface temperature by Voyager 2 range between 34 and 44K (−239 and −229 °C), with an extrapolated surface temperature of 37.5K (−235.7 °C) based on an atmospheric thermal profile.
- Discovery
- Overview
- How Triton Got Its Name
Triton was discovered on Oct. 10, 1846 by British astronomer William Lassell, just 17 days after Neptune itself was discovered.
Triton is the largest of Neptune's 13 moons. It is unusual because it is the only large moon in our solar system that orbits in the opposite direction of its planet's rotation―a retrograde orbit. Scientists think Triton is a Kuiper Belt Object captured by Neptune's gravity millions of years ago. It shares many similarities with Pluto, the best know...
Triton is named after the son of Poseidon (the Greek god comparable to the Roman Neptune). Until the discovery of the second moon Nereid in 1949, Triton was commonly known as simply "the satellite of Neptune."
Aug 6, 2020 · Voyager 2’s observations exposed its icy surface, at equilibrium with a tenuous atmosphere, measuring a pressure of just 14 micro-bar (McKinnon and Kirk, 2014, In: Encyclopedia of the Solar System, pp. 861-881). Images showed a variety of morphologies consistent with recent geological activity.
five-mile-tall, geyser-like plume of dark material has been discovered erupting from the surface of Neptune's moon Triton in one of the images returned last month to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft.
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Aug 26, 2019 · Despite Triton’s frigid -392o F surface temperature, Voyager’s images revealed evidence of geysers spewing dark material into the moon’s tenuous atmosphere that deposited back onto the surface. Voyager passed behind both Neptune and Triton, with instruments returning data about their atmospheres.
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In the highest regions of the atmosphere, where the pressure was measured at 70 mbar (1.0 psi), [44] Voyager 2 recorded a temperature of 82 K (−191.2 °C; −312.1 °F). Deeper within the atmosphere, where the pressure was recorded to be 1,200 mbar (17 psi), the temperature rose to 143 K (−130 °C; −202 °F). [ 45 ]
