Saturday, October 10, 2015

Triton discovered by William Lassell in 1846



The largest Neptunian moon Triton was discovered by William Lassell on October 10, 1846.  He had been studying Neptune which had been discovered the month before.  Lassell was trying to confirm Neptune had rings like Saturn but instead discovered the first of 13 moons.

In 1989, Voyager 2 passed by Triton and gave us the first glimpse of the strange new world.

Triton was the last solid object visited by the Voyager 2 spacecraft on its epic 10-year tour of the outer solar system. Voyager mapped only the hemisphere that faces Neptune, but revealed a very young surface scarred by rising blobs of ice (diapirs), faults, and volcanic pits and lava flows composed of water and other ices.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA12187

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