Celestia Forums

In my Celestia Triton Orbits Neptune but orbits the oposite way from which Neptune and al its moons are spinning.
and at a slanted angle.

Neptune and all its moons are in a flat (ish) orbit spinning anti-clockwise
but triton is spinning clockwise in a diagonal orbit.

Does this sound right ? or there abouts.

if not I can get a sceens shot up here

Hey Darkmiss,
Yes that is the way Triton orbits Neptune. Its call a retrograde orbit and it is probably caused by Neptune capturing Triton. This means Triton probably didn't form in orbit around Neptune but probably formed in the ort cloud and it travelled inward and got captured. Triton is probably an object similar to what Pluto and Charron are. That is they are Planetoids and not real planets. Planetoids are bodies that are greater than 500 miles in diameter but less than 1800 miles and Asteroids are under 500 miles. I read that that was the consensis anyway but I can't remember where. The term planetoid doesn't get used very much. So yes what you see programed into Celestia is quite acurate and you have no need to change a thing. Also Venus spins retrograde as well but its because sometime in Venus' past it got hit by a very large object that either:
1 slowed its orbit upon impact or 2 when it hit Venus it tipped Venus over ninty degrees on it axis and so it apears to be spinging backwords but in reality its spining the right way but its just upsidedown to rest of the planets in or solar system. I think the latter answer is probably the right one. I think it would have been incredible to see that collision. Something similar is believed to be what put Uranus on its side and what formed the Earth's moon. Makes you stop and think about how many of these really big collisions have ocured in our system and how dangerous the ancient solar system really was. Its really quite incredible that we are here at all

Wow what a great explenation,
thanks for telling me my Celestia is correct

Also I noticed that Uranus spins top to botton instead of sideways, too.
looks really freaky compared to the rest of the planets

Darkmiss wrote:Wow what a great explenation,
thanks for telling me my Celestia is correct

Also I noticed that Uranus spins top to botton instead of sideways, too.
looks really freaky compared to the rest of the planets

Uranus spins top to bottom in reality so this is correct in Celestia, too.