Hubble data suggest plumes of water vapor erupt from Europa’s surface
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.0210129
Scientific American : Ultraviolet shadows soaring over the southern edge of Europa and backlit against Jupiter’s bright clouds have been spotted by astronomers studying Hubble Space Telescope images captured between 2013 and 2015. William Sparks of the Space Telescope Science Institute and colleagues say those shadows most likely indicate the presence of plumes of water vapor, which may be spewing up from a subsurface ocean potentially 10 times as deep as and three times more voluminous than Earth’s ocean. The findings back up a 2012 sighting in the same area, of a UV emission thought to represent hydrogen and oxygen particles. To get a better look at Europa, two missions, one by NASA and another by the European Space Agency, are planned for the early 2020s.
