Hubble image archive
Water Vapor Plumes Over Europa
This graphic shows the location of water vapor detected over Europa's south pole that provides the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off Europa's surface, in observations taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in December 2012. Hubble didn't photograph plumes, but sp...
- Date
- Jan 1, 2013
- Mission
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Archive ID
- hubblesite-images-2013-55-3275-image
This graphic shows the location of water vapor detected over Europa's south pole that provides the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off Europa's surface, in observations taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in December 2012. Hubble didn't photograph plumes, but spectroscopically detected auroral emissions from oxygen and hydrogen. The aurora is powered by Jupiter's magnetic field. This is only the second moon in the solar system found ejecting water vapor from the frigid surface. The image of Europa is derived from a global surface map generated from combined NASA Voyager and Galileo space probe observations.
Credits
Illustration Credit: NASA, ESA, and L. Roth (Southwest Research Institute and University of Cologne, Germany)Image Details
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | Europa |
| Object Description | Jovian Moon |
| Distance | The mean radius of Europa's orbit about Jupiter is 670,900 kilometers (416,900 miles). |
| Dimensions | Neptune has a mean diameter of 3,122 kilometers (1,940 miles). |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | This image was created from HST data from proposal : J. Saur (University of Cologne, Germany), L. Roth (Southwest Research Institute/University of Cologne, Germany), P. Feldman and D. Strobel (JHU), K. Retherford (Southwest Research Institute), M. McGrath (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center), and F. Nimmo (University of California, Santa Cruz). |
| Instrument | HST>STIS |
| Exposure Dates | November and December, 2012 |
| Filters | Grating: G140L |
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Image and source material are credited to the official mission archive linked below.
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