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Watching meteors on Triton |
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| Authors: | W Dean Pesnell JM Grebowsky |
| Institution: | a Nomad Research, Inc., 795 Scarborough Court, Arnold, MD 21012-1336, USA b Planetary Magnetospheres Branch, Code 695.1, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA c River Hill High School, 13849 Russell Zep Drive, Clarkesville, MD 21029, USA |
| Abstract: | The thin atmosphere of Neptune's moon Triton is dense enough to ablate micrometeoroids as they pass through. A combination of Triton's orbital velocity around Neptune and its orbital velocity around the Sun gives a maximum meteoroid impact velocity of approximately 19 km s−1, sufficient to heat the micrometeoroids to visibility as they enter. The ablation profiles of icy and stony micrometeoroids were calculated, along with the estimated brightness of the meteors. In contrast to the terrestrial case, visible meteors would extend very close to the surface of Triton. In addition, the variation in the meteoroid impact velocity as Triton orbits Neptune produces a large variation in the brightness of meteors with orbital phase, a unique Solar System phenomenon. |
| Keywords: | Meteoroids Atmosphere composition Ionosphere |
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