Water Vapor from Europa

This graphic shows the location of water vapor detected over Europa's south pole in observations taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in December 2012. This is the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off Europa's surface.

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 observations taken by NASA's Voyager and Galileo space probes.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/L. Roth/SWRI/University of Cologne


Note: For more information, see Hubble Discovers Water Vapor Venting from Jupiter's Moon Europa, PIA17659: Artist's Concept of Europa Water Vapor Plume, and Hubble Sees Evidence of Water Vapor at Jupiter Moon.

Clay Minerals on Europa

This image, using data from NASA's Galileo mission, shows the first detection of clay-like minerals on the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. The clay-like minerals appear in blue in the false-color patch of data from Galileo's Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer. Surfaces richer in water ice appear in red. The background image is a mosaic of images from Galileo's Solid State Imaging system in the colors that human eyes would see.

Scientists think an asteroid or comet impact could have delivered the clay-type minerals to Europa because these minerals are commonly found in these primitive celestial bodies. These kinds of asteroids and comets also typically carry organic compounds.

A version of the image without the infrared area is on the right.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Note: For more information, see PIA17657: Hit Hard: Possible Collision at Europa (Artist's Concept) and Clay-Like Minerals Found on Icy Crust of Europa.

Juno's Flyby of the Earth and Moon

This movie sequence of images was captured by a star tracker camera on NASA's Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft. It was taken over several days as Juno approached Earth for a close flyby that would send the spacecraft onward to the giant planet. Although grainy and over-exposed, the images provide a nonetheless remarkable and uncommon view from a human-made craft approaching our world from deep space.

The images that make up this movie sequence were acquired by one of the four cameras that comprise Juno's Advanced Stellar Compass, or ASC -- a key component of the Juno magnetometer experiment. The ASC cameras provide images of the stars that reveal precisely the spacecraft's orientation in space, which will be vital for determining the strength and direction of Jupiter's magnetic field once Juno arrives there in 2016.

As star trackers, the cameras were not designed for imaging the planets. This sequence exists because of their serendipitous placement on the spacecraft -- situated on Juno's magnetometer boom, at the end of one of the craft's large solar arrays. The cameras happened to be pointed in Juno's direction of motion during the flyby, allowing this movie sequence to be obtained.

The movie begins at 2:00 UTC on October 6, more than four days before Juno's closest approach, when the spacecraft was approximately 2.1 million miles (3.3 million kilometers) from Earth. Earth's moon is seen transiting in front of our planet, and then moves out of frame toward the right as Juno enters the space inside the orbit of our natural satellite. As Juno gets closer to Earth, hints of clouds and continents are visible before the planet's brightness overwhelms the cameras, which were not designed to image so bright an object. The sequence ends as Earth passes out of view, which corresponds to approximately 17:35 UTC October 9 when Juno was at an altitude of about 47,000 miles (76,000 kilometers) above Earth's surface.

The sequence is replayed in the second half of this movie at two times and eight times magnification.

As Juno is a spinning spacecraft, the images were aligned to remove their apparent rotation. The original ASC images are monochrome; faint coloration has been added by converting the measured grayscale values into false colors matching a true color image of Earth.

Music Courtesy: Vangelis (used with permission).

Video credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/DTU

Note: For more information, see PIA17744: Juno Detects a Ham Radio "HI" from Earth and NASA's Juno Gives Starship-Like View of Earth Flyby.