Triton: Neptune's Largest Moon
On October 10th, 1846,
William Lassell
was observing the newly discovered
planet Neptune. He was attempting
to confirm his observation, made just the previous week,
that Neptune had a ring.
But this time he discovered
that Neptune
had a satellite as well. Lassell soon proved that the ring
was a product of his new telescope's distortion, but the satellite
Triton
remained. The above picture of Triton
was taken in 1989 by the only spacecraft ever to pass Triton:
Voyager 2. Voyager 2 found fascinating terrain,
a thin atmosphere, and even evidence for ice volcanoes on this
world of peculiar orbit and spin. Ironically, Voyager 2 also confirmed the existence of complete thin rings around Neptune
- but these would have been quite invisible to Lassell!