Triton's geyser-like plumes - Discovery and basic characterization

Abstract

One model for the mechanism driving the plumes of the four active geyser-like eruptions observed by Voyager 2 on Triton is a heating up of nitrogen ice in a subsurface greenhouse environment, where nitrogen gas pressurized by solar heating explosively vents to the surface carrying clouds of ice and dark particles into the atmosphere. A temperature increase of less than 4 K above the ambient surface value of 38 + or - 3 K suffices to drive the plumes to 8-km altitude. Each eruption may last a year or more, over the course of which 0.1 cu km of ice is sublimed.