Triton
Neptune’s unusual moon
Triton is Neptune’s largest moon. It is so cold that some materials which are gases on Earth lie frozen on its surface. There are bright plains and strange areas that look like the skin of a melon. Voyager 2 even spotted material rising above this distant world.
Triton travels around Neptune in the opposite direction to the planet’s spin. That is unusual for a large moon! Scientists think Triton may once have travelled around the Sun on its own before Neptune’s gravity captured it. They check this explanation using observations. Triton helps us explore the very cold outer parts of our Solar System.
Help Triton get home → Explore in the planetarium →In the planetarium you can spin this world and look at it from every side.
Artist’s impression · the surface is an illustration.
Sources and images
Celestial maps: Solar System Scope / INOVE · CC BY 4.0. Thumbnails were reduced and shaded. Artistic SVG maps were created for this project.