Triton's atmosphere Options

[ngunn]

Interesting news item:
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/A_Summer...Triton_999.html

[ngunn]

I agree these categories trigger interesting trains of thought. I suspect though the primary distinction for most planetary scientists would be between activity arising from an internal heat source, however generated, and processes driven by sunlight. True, tidal heating comes from outside, but in the widest sense so does the radioactivity from heavy atoms produced in a supernova. So I think there are two separate questions to ask of any candidate world:

When and how did/do you acquire the energy that drives your active processes?
What materials are involved in the activity and over what range of temperatures?

[john_s]

If we're lucky, New Horizons will find analogous plumes on Pluto and will give us much better data on them than Voyager could do at Triton. Though it's more likely that Pluto will come up with its own quite different but equally bizarre phenomena to amaze us.

John