Na Trytonie dało się dokonać detekcji sygnatury podczerwieni wytwarzanej przez mieszankę cząsteczek tlenku węgla i azotu, która może transportować materiał na powierzchnię Księżyca przez gejzery.NAU astrophysicist leads international team in ‘unprecedented’ discovery of unique infrared light signature on Neptune’s moon TritonPosted by Heather Tate on July 29, 2019
(...) “While the icy spectral fingerprint we uncovered was entirely reasonable, especially as this combination of ices can be created in the lab, pinpointing this specific wavelength of infrared light on another world is unprecedented,” said NAU professor Stephen Tegler, who led the study, collaborating with Will Grundy and Jennifer Hanley of Lowell Observatory. Other co-authors from NAU are Terry Stufflebeam, Shyanne Dustrud, Gerrick Lindberg, Anna Engle, Thomas Dillingham, Daniel Matthew and David Trilling.
In the Earth’s atmosphere, carbon monoxide and nitrogen molecules exist as gasses, not ices. In fact, molecular nitrogen is the dominant gas in the air we breathe, and carbon monoxide is a rare contaminant that can be lethal. On distant Triton, however, carbon monoxide and nitrogen freeze solid as ices. They can form their own independent ices, or can condense together in the icy mix detected in the Gemini data. This icy mix could be involved in Triton’s iconic geysers first seen in
Voyager 2 spacecraft images as dark, windblown streaks on the surface of the distant, icy moon.
Looking ahead, the researchers expect that these findings will shed light on the composition of ices on other distant worlds beyond Neptune. Astronomers have suspected that the mixing of carbon monoxide and nitrogen ice exists not only on Triton, but also on Pluto, where the
New Horizons spacecraft found the two ices coexisting. This Gemini finding is the first direct spectroscopic evidence of these ices mixing and absorbing this type of light on either world. (...)
https://nau.edu/nau-research/nau-astrophysicist-leads-international-team-in-unprecedented-discovery-of-unique-infrared-light-signature-on-neptunes-moon-triton/http://www.gemini.edu/node/21182