Glossary term: Triton
Description: Triton is the largest moon of the planet Neptune. It is larger than Pluto, and in fact, because of the unusual properties of its orbit and from what we know of its composition, Triton may well be a dwarf planet captured by Neptune. Triton has an icy surface, with water ice covered by a layer of frozen nitrogen, surrounding a mostly rocky core. Voyager 2, so far the only space probe to visit Triton, discovered that the moon is geologically active, with geysers blowing out nitrogen gas, and very probably with ice volcanoes ("cryovolcanoes") – analogous to Earth's volcanoes, but with water and ammonia instead of liquified rock.
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Term and definition status: This term and its definition have been approved by a research astronomer and a teacher
The OAE Multilingual Glossary is a project of the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE) in collaboration with the IAU Office of Astronomy Outreach (OAO). The terms and definitions were chosen, written and reviewed by a collective effort from the OAE, the OAE Centers and Nodes, the OAE National Astronomy Education Coordinators (NAECs) and other volunteers. You can find a full list of credits here. All glossary terms and their definitions are released under a Creative Commons CC BY-4.0 license and should be credited to "IAU OAE".
