An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics
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The seventh and the largest of → Neptune's satellites. It has a diameter of 2,700 km and orbits its planet at a mean distance of 354,760 km every 5.877 days. Triton was discovered by William Lassell in 1846 scarcely a month after Neptune was discovered. Triton is colder than any other measured object in the solar system with a surface temperature of -235° C. It has an extremely thin atmosphere. Nitrogen ice particles might form thin clouds a few kilometers above the surface. The atmospheric pressure at Triton's surface is about 15 microbars, 0.000015 times the sea-level surface pressure on Earth. Triton is the only large satellite in the solar system to circle a planet in a → retrograde motion, that is in a direction opposite to the rotation of the planet.

In Gk. mythology, Triton is a god of the sea, the son of Poseidon (Neptune); usually portrayed as having the head and trunk of a man and the tail of a fish.