Dinosaurs on Triton

More of my Troonautical excursions can be seen in my DA "Paleo & Sci Illo" gallery:

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If my hypothetical dinosaurian space travelers had reached Neptune 65 million years ago, they may have been presented by a sight that no longer exists. Ring systems around the gas giants of our Solar System my be transient phenomena. They may form when material is available and evaporate when it is depleted. Neptune may have had a complete ring during this distant epoch rather than the ring arcs of our own time.

Neptune's moon Triton is unique in the Solar System. It is the only large moon that orbits its host planet in a retrograde motion. This is certain evidence that Triton was once a planet with an independent orbit around the Sun that was captured by Neptune as the gas giant migrated outward from its original location. Triton may well be a sister world of Pluto and other icy Kuiper Belt objects that were hurled away from the Sun due to gravitational perturbation.

Our stalwart travelers are watching the eruption of nitrogen geysers that sublimate from liquid N2 reservoirs beneath the ice crust of the moon.

This is a super mixed media artcard. It includes graphite pencil, prismacolors, watercolor brush pens, ink markers and acrylic paint.

art & text (c) John P. Alexander