Hi there! Did you know that Neptune had a prominent satellite, i.e. Triton, on a retrograde orbit? This is so unusual that it is thought to have been trapped, i.e. was originally an asteroid, and has not been formed in the protoneptunian nebula. The study I present you today, Triton’s evolution with a primordial Neptunian satellite system, by Raluca Rufu and Robin M. Canup, explains how Triton ejected the primordial satellites of Neptune. This study has recently been published in The Astronomical Journal.

The satellites of Uranus and Neptune

We are tempted to see the two planets Uranus and Neptune as kinds of twins. They are pretty similar in size, are the two outermost known planets in the Solar System, and are gaseous. A favorable orbital configuration made their visitation possible by the spacecraft Voyager 2 in 1986 and 1989, respectively.

Among their differences are the high obliquity of Uranus, the presence of rings around Uranus while Neptune displays arcs, and different configurations in their system of satellites. See for Uranus:

	Semimajor axis	Eccentricity	Inclination	Radius
Miranda	5.12 Ru	0.001	4.338°	235.8 km
Ariel	7.53 Ru	0.001	0.041°	578.9 km
Umbriel	10.49 Ru	0.004	0.128°	584.7 km
Titania	17.20 Ru	0.001	0.079°	788.9 km
Oberon	23.01 Ru	0.001	0.068°	761.4 km
Puck	3.39 Ru	0	0.319°	81 km
Sycorax	480.22 Ru	0.522	159.420°	75 km

I show on this table the main satellites of Uranus, and we can see that the major ones are at a reasonable distance (in Uranian radius Ru) of the planet, and orbit almost in the same plane. The orbit of Miranda is tilted thanks to a past mean-motion resonance with Umbriel, which means that it was originally in the same plane. So, we can infer that these satellites were formed classically, i.e. the same way as the satellites of Jupiter, from a protoplanetary nebula, in which the planet and the satellites accreted. An exception is Sycorax, which is very far, highly inclined, and highly eccentric. As an irregular satellite, it has probably been formed somewhere else, as an asteroid, and been trapped by the gravitational attraction of Uranus.

Now let us have a look at the system of Neptune:

	Semimajor axis	Eccentricity	Inclination	Radius
Triton	14.41 Rn	0	156.865°	1353.4 km
Nereid	223.94 Rn	0.751	7.090°	170 km
Proteus	4.78 Rn	0	0.075°	210 km
Larissa	2.99 Rn	0.001	0.205°	97 km

Yes, the main satellite seems to be an irregular one! It does not orbit that far, its orbit is (almost) circular, but its inclination is definitely inconsistent with an in situ formation, i.e. it has been trapped, which has been confirmed by several studies. Nereid is much further, but with a so eccentric orbit that it regularly enters the zone, which is dynamically perturbed by Triton. You can also notice the absence of known satellites between 4.78 and 14.41 Neptunian radii. This suggests that this zone may have been cleared by the gravitational perturbation of a massive body… which is Triton. The study I present you simulates what could have happened.

A focus on Triton

Before that, let us look at Triton. The system of Neptune has been visited by the spacecraft Voyager 2 in August 1989, which mapped 40% of the surface of Triton. Surprisingly, it showed a limited number of impact craters, which means that the surface has been renewed, maybe some 1 hundred of millions of years ago. Renewing the surface requires an activity, probably cryovolcanism as on the satellite of Saturn Enceladus, which should has been sustained by heating. Triton was on the action of the tides raised by Neptune, but probably not only, since tides are not considered as efficient enough to have circularized the orbit. The tides have probably been supplemented by gravitational interactions with the primordial system of Neptune, i.e. satellites and / or disk debris. If there had been collisions, then they would have themselves triggered heating. As a consequence of this heating, we can expect a differentiated structure.

Moreover, Triton orbits around Neptune in 5.877 days, on a retrograde orbit, while the rotation of Neptune is prograde. This configuration, associated with the tidal interaction between Triton and Neptune, makes Triton spiral very slowly inward. In other words, it will one day be so close to Neptune that it will be destroyed, and probably create a ring. But we will not witness it.

A numerical study with SyMBA

This study is essentially numerical. It aimed at modeling the orbital evolution of Triton, in the presence of Nereid and the putative primordial satellites of Neptune. The authors assumed that there were 4 primordial satellites, with different initial conditions, and considered 3 total masses for them: 0.3, 1, and 3 total masses of the satellites of Uranus. For each of these 3 masses, they ran 200 numerical simulations.

The simulations were conducted with the integrator (numerical code) SyMBA, i.e. Symplectic Massive Body Algorithm. The word symplectic refers to a mathematical property of the equations as they are written, which guarantee a robustness of the results over very long timescales, i.e. there may be an error, but which does not diverge. It may be not convenient if you make short-term accurate simulations, for instance if you want to design the trajectory of a spacecraft, but it is the right tool for simulating a system over hundreds of Myrs (millions of years). This code also handles close encounters, but not the consequences of impacts. The authors bypassed this problem in treating the impacts separately, determining if there were disrupting, and in that case estimated the timescales of reaccretion.

Results

The authors found, consistently with previous studies, that the interaction between Triton and the primordial system could explain its presently circular orbit, i.e. it damped the eccentricity more efficiently than the tides. Moreover, the interaction with Triton caused collisions between the primordial moons, but usually without disruption (hit-and-run impacts). In case of disruption, the authors argue that the reaccretion would be fast with respect of the time evolution of the orbit of Triton, which means that we could lay aside the existence of a debris disk.

Moreover, they found that the total mass of the primordial system had a critical role: for the heaviest one, i.e. 3 masses of the Uranian system, Triton had only small chances to survive, while it had reasonable chances in the other two cases.

Something frustrating when you try to simulate something that happened a few hundreds of Myrs ago is that you can at the best be probabilistic. The study shows that a light primordial system is likelier to have existed than a heavy one, but there are simulations with a heavy system, in which Triton survives. So, a heavy system is not prohibited.

The study and its authors

• The study, which is available as free article. The authors probably paid extra fees for that, many thanks to them! You can also look at it on arXiv.
• A conference paper on the same study,
• The ResearchGate profile of Raluca Rufu,
• The Homepage of Robin M. Canup.

Before closing this post, I need to mention that the title has been borrowed from Matija Ćuk (SETI, Mountain View, CA), who works on this problem as well (see these two conference abstracts here and here).

That’s it for today! Please do not forget to comment. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.