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This Day, That Year – October 10

Mon 10 Oct 2022    
EcoBalance
| 2 min read

This day in history we feature Triton. The largest moon of the planet Neptune, is discovered by astronomer William Lassell on this day in 1846.

Trivia – Triton

Triton is the largest natural satellite of the planet Neptune, it is the only large moon in the Solar System with a retrograde orbit, an orbit in the direction opposite to its planet’s rotation. Because of its retrograde orbit and composition similar to Pluto, Triton is thought to have been a dwarf planet, captured from the Kuiper belt. At 2,710 kilometres in diameter, it is the seventh-largest moon in the Solar System, the only satellite of Neptune massive enough to be in hydrostatic equilibrium, the second-largest planetary moon in relation to its primary (after Earth’s Moon), and larger than Pluto.

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Triton is one of the few moons in the Solar System known to be geologically active. As a consequence, its surface is relatively young, with few obvious impact craters. Intricate cryovolcanic and tectonic terrains suggest a complex geological history. Triton has a surface of mostly frozen nitrogen, a mostly water-ice crust, an icy mantle and a substantial core of rock and metal. The core makes up two thirds of its total mass. The mean density is 2.061 g/cm3, reflecting a composition of approximately 15–35% water ice. During its 1989 flyby of Triton, Voyager 2 found surface temperatures of 38 K (−235 °C), and also discovered active geysers erupting sublimated nitrogen gas, contributing to a tenuous nitrogen atmosphere less than 1⁄70,000 the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere at sea level. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to have visited Triton. As the probe was only able to study about 40% of the moon’s surface, future missions have been proposed to revisit the Neptune system with a focus on Triton.

Source – Wikipedia

This day in history Blackpool Tramway


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