Hubble spots possible water plumes erupting on Jupiter's moon Europa September 26, 2016 Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! This video is a time-lapse sequence of Hubble Space Telescope images of the moon Europa as it moved across the face of Jupiter over the course of 19 minutes. Europa is at the bottom center on Jupiter's disk, with the Great Red Spot to the left and Europa's shadow to its right. The video was created by combining six snapshots taken in ultraviolet light with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Credit: NASA, ESA, W. Sparks and Zolt Levay (STScI) Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have imaged what may be water vapor plumes erupting off the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. This finding bolsters other Hubble observations suggesting the icy moon erupts with high-altitude water vapor plumes. The observation increases the possibility that missions to Europa may be able to sample Europa's ocean without having to drill through miles of ice. "Europa's ocean is considered to be one of the most promising places that could potentially harbor life in the solar system," said Geoff Yoder, acting associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. "These plumes, if they do indeed exist, may provide another way to sample Europa's subsurface." Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-09-hubble-plumes-erupting-jupiter-moon.html#jCp
http://hubblesite.org/pubinfo/pdf/2016/33/pdf.pdf PROBING FOR EVIDENCE OF PLUMES ON EUROPA WITH HST/STIS Short title: PLUMES ON EUROPA Corresponding author: sparks@stsci.edu ABSTRACT Roth et al. (2014a) reported evidence for plumes of water venting from a southern high latitude region on Europa – spectroscopic detection of off-limb line emission from the dissociation products of water. Here, we present Hubble Space Telescope (HST) direct images of Europa in the far ultraviolet (FUV) as it transited the smooth face of Jupiter, in order to measure absorption from gas or aerosols beyond the Europa limb. Out of ten observations we found three in which plume activity could be implicated. Two show statistically significant features at latitudes similar to Roth et al., and the third, at a more equatorial location. We consider potential systematic effects that might influence the statistical analysis and create artifacts, and are unable to find any that can definitively explain the features, although there are reasons to be cautious. If the apparent absorption features are real, the magnitude of implied outgassing is similar to that of the Roth et al. feature, however the apparent activity appears more frequently in our data.
