User:Gnobis84/Atmosphere of Triton

Voyager 2
Voyager 2 flew past Triton five hours after its closest approach to Neptune in mid-late August 1989. During the flyby, Voyager 2 took measurements of the atmosphere, finding methane and nitrogen in the atmosphere. Voyager 2 also captured at least two plumes erupting through the nitrogen ice of Triton, and this is the first evidence of active plumes on an icy world such as Triton. The plumes were around 100 km long and 8 km above the surface and produced dark shadows in the images from Voyager 2. Around 100 dark surface fans on the SPT are attributed to the plumes. The vapor mass flux of the plumes is estimated to be around 400 kg/s per plume. They caused large amounts of dark substrate to be thrown through the thin nitrogen ice and then into the atmosphere. The plumes captured on Triton are similar to the plumes seen on Enceladus, and the modeled ejection speeds are more consistent with a deep source.

'''It has been suggested that the observed plumes were not of eruptive origin, but instead are dust devils, suggested due to the observed plumes' length to height ratio. The proposed mechanism for dust devil formation is that patches of the surface without nitrogen frost would heat up more quickly than the surrounding area. Given this and Triton's low surface pressure, the atmosphere would begin to heat up due to convection, to as much as 10 K greater than the surface temperature, allowing for the creation of dust devils with wind speeds of up to 20 meters per second. This could explain the observed surface temperature of 38 K, and remove the need to come up with a heating mechanism for the geysers. The dust devil hypothesis, however, is largely unconsidered today, due to questions as to why more dust devils were not observed given their proposed formation and that the observed dark streaks and fans associated with the plumes do not require dust devils to explain them, as well as the fact the model was based upon an erroneous temperature profile for the atmosphere. As a result, eruptive based models for the plumes are generally favored today. '''