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August 2010

Triton is the largest moon of the planet Neptune, discovered on October 10, 1846 by William Lassell. It is the only large moon in the Solar System with a retrograde orbit, which is an orbit in the opposite direction to its planet's rotation. At 2700 km in diameter, it is the seventh-largest moon in the Solar System. Because of its retrograde orbit and composition similar to Pluto's, Triton is thought to have been captured from the Kuiper belt. Triton consists of a crust of frozen nitrogen over an icy mantle believed to cover a substantial core of rock and metal. The core makes up two-thirds of its total mass. Triton has a mean density of 2.061 g/cm³ and is composed of approximately 15–35% water ice.

Triton is one of the few moons in the Solar System known to be geologically active. As a consequence, its surface is relatively young, with a complex geological history revealed in intricate and mysterious cryovolcanic and tectonic terrains. Part of its crust is dotted with geysers believed to erupt nitrogen.

The moon was discovered by British astronomer William Lassell just 17 days after Neptune itself was discovered by German astronomers Johann Gottfried Galle and Heinrich Louis d'Arrest, who were following co-ordinates given them by French astronomer and mathematician Urbain Le Verrier.

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Month	Article
March 2005	Black Hole
April 2005	Io
May 2005	Kreutz Sungrazers
June 2005	Big Bang
July 2005	Cat's Eye Nebula
August 2005	Transit of Venus
September 2005	Apollo 8
October 2005	Silverpit crater
November 2005	Astrophysics Data System
December 2005	Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
January 2006	Hubble Space Telescope
February 2006	H II region
March 2006	Carl Edward Sagan
April 2006	Galileo Galilei
May 2006	Comet Hale-Bopp
June 2006	Planetary nebula
July 2006	Sun
August 2006	Definition of planet
September 2006	Fermi paradox
October 2006	Mercury (planet)
November 2006	Crab Nebula
December 2006	Hubble Deep Field
January 2007	Barnard's Star
February 2007	Binary star
March 2007	Globular cluster
April 2007	Solar System
May 2007	Mars
June 2007	Galaxy
July 2007	Enceladus
August 2007	Extrasolar planet
September 2007	Herbig-Haro object
October 2007	Kuiper belt
November 2007	Johannes Kepler
December 2007	Star
January 2008	Saturn
February 2008	Supernova
April 2008	Comet
May 2008	IK Pegasi
June 2008	Callisto
July 2008	White dwarf
September 2008	Venus
October 2008	Scattered disc
January 2009	Radio Astronomy
February 2009	General relativity
March 2009	Open cluster
April 2009	Redshift
May 2009	Rings of Uranus
June 2009	Tau Ceti
July 2009	Gamma-ray burst
August 2009	Atmosphere of Jupiter
September 2009	Zhang Heng
October 2009	Main sequence
November 2009	Big Bang
December 2009	Herbig–Haro object
January 2010	Eris
February 2010	Nebular hypothesis
March 2010	GRB 970508
April 2010	Titan (moon)
May 2010	Vega
June 2010	243 Ida