Science / Medicine : Voyager Photos Catch Active Triton Volcano

Scientists studying images from the Voyager flyby of Neptune have been able to answer one of the most important questions left over from the August encounter: the ice volcanoes on the moon of Triton are still active.

“We caught one in the act,” said Ellis Miner, deputy Voyager project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

Triton thus becomes only the third object in the solar system known to have active volcanoes, along with the Earth and Jupiter’s moon Io. Some scientists, however, believe Venus also has active volcanoes.

Images sent back by the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it whipped past Triton during its fourth planetary encounter stunned scientists because they revealed geological structures that could best be explained as ice volcanoes. Scientists finally concluded that the features were, indeed, ice volcanoes, but no one could say for sure that the volcanoes were still active.

But after studying the several images taken from different angles, the laboratory issued a formal statement saying:

“A 5-mile-tall geyser-like plume of dark material has been discovered erupting from the surface (of Triton.) “Resembling a smokestack, the narrow stem of the dark plume rises vertically nearly five miles, forming a cloud that drifts 90 miles eastward in Triton’s winds.”