# Triton

*In the Solar System*

Neptune's largest moon, and it goes round the wrong way: against the planet's spin, on a tilted orbit, which a moon formed in place cannot do. So it was captured - almost certainly a body from the Kuiper belt, a cousin of Pluto. Voyager 2 photographed it in 1989 and saw nitrogen geysers on a surface at −235 °C, among the coldest ever measured. Its backward orbit is slowly shrinking, and Neptune will one day tear it apart.

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Radius | 1,353 km |
| Around the equator | 8,504 km |
| From the Sun | 4,469,361,014 km (+220,939 km/d) |
| From the Earth | 4,324,333,322 km (+905,317 km/d) |
| A signal takes | 4 h |
| Goes round | Neptune |
| Placed to within | 493 km |

Distances and speed are computed from JPL Horizons trajectories and are true of 2026-10-09, changing at the rate given beside each. The interpolation itself is good to a few kilometres; what ages these figures is the date, not the arithmetic.

## Elsewhere

- On the live map: https://www.orbitalmap.space/?world=solar-system&focus=triton
- This object as a page: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/triton/
- Every object: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/
- What this site is and what it reads: https://www.orbitalmap.space/llms.txt