Triton's crust is 55% nitrogen ice, with other ices (like water ice and frozen carbon dioxide) mixed in: the same ratios as Pluto. Triton has a reddish color to it, thought to be from methane ice ...

More Triton is similar to the varied terrain we find on Pluto. Along with other similarities, we can confidently conclude that Triton originated not around Neptune itself, but in the Kuiper belt.

As NASA’s New Horizons mission heads to Pluto, scientists could get an idea of what to expect by studying Triton, Neptune's strange icy moon.

On its quest to reach Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is crossing Neptune’s orbit today, Aug. 25 -- the same day that the Voyager 2 spacecraft visited the giant icy planet in 1989.

As many as 50 planets Pluto’s size or larger would need to exist past Neptune for such a collision to become likely. Uranus is at an even more extreme angle. That planet is tilted 98° on its axis.

Pluto and Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, have been considered siblings or cousins–both are small worlds with thin, nitrogen-based atmospheres and icy surfaces.

Triton has some peculiarities about its environment, including the fact that it orbits backward to Neptune's rotation and seems to have undergone a huge melt in the past.

In both the Pluto and Triton models, an easterly (prograde) jet is present at the equator with a maximum magnitude of 10-12 m/s and 4 m/s, respectively.

NASA's New Horizons mission, which flew by Pluto in 2015, unexpectedly revealed Pluto also possesses haze hugging the dwarf planet's frozen surface.Since Pluto, Titan and Triton are all icy worlds ...

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have taken a fresh look at the distant edges of our solar system — and found that, once again, Pluto is defying expectations.When NASA's New ...

Pluto is the only place other than Earth in our solar system that's known to have white-peaked mountains, but these white caps aren't made of snow. Instead, they're made of methane frost. And ...