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“True Detective: Night Country” Trailer – The HBO Series Heads into the Icy Dark in January 2024 – Bloody Disgusting
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Freezing Drizzle, Icy Spots Tonight
First Alert Weather:
- Freezing Drizzle, Light Snow or Sleet This evening and night
- Areas of ice on roadways, use extra caution on any untreated surface
- Light Wintry Mix Ends Early Monday
Tonight: Freezing drizzle will create slick spots on untreated surfaces. It’s not a lot of moisture, but it doesn’t take much ice to cause big problems. Som light snow/sleet may mix in, but it’s the freezing drizzle that presents the biggest issue with black ice in spots. Be mindful of slick spots on untreated surfaces. Accumulations of sleet and snow will be very minor, generally nothing to a dusting. Ice accumulation will be a glazing to about 0.5″ and we may have a few isolated spots 0.5″ to 0.10″. The ice is purely a travel issue, no power outages as this is very light amounts of ice.
Monday: Mainly dry during the day with a few snow showers well south of St. Louis in the afternoon through the evening. Areas south of Farmington are most likely to collect minor snow accumulations in the afternoon to early evening under 1″. This snow is expected to miss the St. Louis metro.
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Copyright 2022 KMOV. All rights reserved.
Scientists find 17-pound meteorite in icy Antarctica
A daring team of scientists has endured the inhospitable conditions of the icy desert of Antarctica to recover five new meteorites, including a near-17-pound monster space rock.
The team of scientists included Field Museum and the University of Chicago researcher Maria Valdes, who estimated that of the 45,000 meteorites recovered to date from the icy wasteland of Antarctica, only 100 or so have been as large as the largest member of this new haul, which weighs 16.7 pounds (7.6 kilograms).
“Size doesn’t necessarily matter when it comes to meteorites, and even tiny micrometeorites can be incredibly scientifically valuable, but of course, finding a big meteorite like this one is rare and really exciting,” Valdes said in a statement.
Related: How many meteorites hit Earth every year?
The team, which was led by Vinciane Debaille, a planetary scientist at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (FNRS-ULB) in Belgium, was the first to explore new potential meteor sites that had been mapped using satellite imagery.
“Going on an adventure exploring unknown areas is exciting, but we also had to deal with the fact that the reality on the ground is much more difficult than the beauty of satellite images,” Debaille said in the statement.
The team planned their excursion for Antarctica’s summer, in late December, but temperatures in the region still hovered at around 14 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 10 degrees degrees Celsius). Valdes said that at some points during the mission, Antarctica was actually warmer than Chicago, but the weather felt more extreme to the team because of days spent riding snowmobiles and trekking through ice fields and nights spent sleeping in tents.
With such frigid conditions even in the midst of summer, Antarctica may seem like an unlikely place for anyone to choose to visit, yet for meteorite hunters like this team, this frigid vista offers unique opportunities. That’s because Antarctica is one of the best spots across the globe to hunt for meteorites.
Antarctica is a desert with a dry climate, which reduces the amount of weathering experienced by meteorites. Also, across the white snowy landscape, the black hue of these space rocks stands out when they are at the surface of the region.
Conditions in Antarctica are even favorable for the discovery of meteorites that may have sunk beneath the snow and ice. This is because the churning motion of glaciers moving against rock can re-expose meteorites near the surface.
Though there is no denying the largest meteorite recovered by the team is a whopper, it’s far from the largest or most massive example of such a space rock to reach Earth’s surface. That record is held by the Hoba meteorite in Namibia. Hoba is 9 feet (2.7 meters) long, 9 feet wide and 3 feet (0.9 meters) thick and weighs around 66 tons, or 132,000 pounds (60,000 kg). That’s almost 7,765 times heavier than the newly discovered Antarctic meteorite.
The whopping new space rock and the other meteorites recovered by the researchers will now be analyzed at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, while the team members will individually divide and study samples of sediments they collected from Antarctica.
Valdes is excited to learn what secrets the meteorites hold. “Studying meteorites helps us better understand our place in the universe,” she said. “The bigger a sample size we have of meteorites, the better we can understand our solar system, and the better we can understand ourselves.”
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Millions are at risk of tornadoes in the South as a winter storm threatens intense snow and dangerously icy conditions in the Midwest
A potent winter storm that turned deadly in California is now threatening powerful tornadoes in the South and heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain in the Midwest.
More than 3 million people are under a tornado watch until 9 p.m. CT in parts of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. Another tornado watch has also been issued for eastern Oklahoma, southeast Kansas and northwest Arkansas, according to the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center.
And tornadoes are not the only risk in the region. Large hail – potentially up to 2 inches in diameter – and thrashing winds of up to 70 mph are possible “well into the night across much of the area,” the Storm Prediction Center warned.
Anyone in areas at risk of tornadoes should seek safe shelter immediately, said Brad Bryant, meteorologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service office in Shreveport, Louisiana.
“If you wait around for a warning to be issued, it is too late,” Bryant said Monday. “You need to have a safe shelter plan in place in advance of these storms.”
He encouraged anyone needing help – especially those living in mobile homes – to contact local emergency mangers or law enforcement for sheltering options.
“Since mid-November we’ve had three rounds of severe weather and we have had fatalities, most of which have occurred in mobile homes,” Bryant said.
In response to the severe weather and flash flooding expected in parts of Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott activated state emergency response resources Monday.
“The State of Texas is proactively working to ensure Texans and their property remain safe from severe weather threats that could impact eastern regions of our state today and early tomorrow,” Abbott said in a statement. “As we monitor conditions and potential threats, I urge Texans in affected areas to heed the guidance of local officials and remain weather-aware as severe weather systems develop. We will swiftly provide all necessary resources to address severe weather and protect our communities.”
From Missouri down to the Gulf Coast, more than 30 million people are at risk for severe weather Monday, CNN Meteorologist Dave Hennen said.
And more tornadoes and damaging winds are possible Tuesday in parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama as the storm moves east.
Farther north, more than 15 million people from Utah to Wisconsin are under winter weather alerts Monday.
The same storm system caused record-setting rainfall and deadly flooding in drought-stricken California over the weekend. And another wave of intense rainfall this week could exacerbate dangerous flooding.
In the Plains and Midwest, rapid snowfall of 1 to 2 inches per hour is forecast from the Nebraska panhandle through southwest Minnesota – leaving a total of more than 12 inches of snow by late Tuesday. The onslaught of snow could be accompanied by thunder.
“These intense rates combined with gusty winds will produce areas of blowing and drifting snow, resulting in snow-covered roads, reduced visibility and difficult travel,” the Weather Prediction Center said.
Significant ice accumulation could lead to power outages and treacherous travel conditions.
Freezing rain could cause more than a quarter-inch of ice to stack up from northeastern Nebraska to northwestern Iowa to southern Minnesota late Monday into Tuesday.
“Travel will become hazardous, if not impossible, later this evening (into) Tuesday in many areas,” the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls said Monday.
Northern California communities submerged in mammoth flooding over the weekend could get deluged by even more rainfall later this week.
It’s not clear how much this storm will make a dent in drought conditions that have gripped California, which started 2022 with the driest beginning of the year on record and ended with flooded roads and swelling rivers.
“Early precipitation forecasts for the midweek storm looks to be around 2 to 3 inches possible in the Central Valley with 3 to 6 inches or more of liquid precipitation in the foothills and mountains,” the weather service office in Sacramento said.
An atmospheric river – a long, narrow region in the atmosphere which can carry moisture thousands of miles – fueled a parade of storms over the weekend, which led to record-setting rainfall and water rescues.
At least two people died, including one found inside a submerged vehicle in Sacramento County and a 72-year-old man struck by a falling tree at a Santa Cruz park, officials said.
Now, another atmospheric river could bring heavy rain and more flooding Wednesday to Northern and central California, including the Bay Area.
This next storm “looks like it will cause dangerous situations,” the National Weather Service in San Francisco said.
Officials urged residents to avoid driving in standing water.
Flooding from the Cosumnes River forced the closure of Highway 99 south of Elk Grove in Sacramento County, the California Department of Transportation tweeted Sunday. “SR 99 is one of the state’s heavily traveled, and commercially important, corridors,” its website said.
Over the past few days, “dozens upon dozens” of people had been rescued, Cosumnes Fire Department Capt. Chris Schamber told CNN affiliate KCRA. Aerial footage from the station showed cars submerged in floodwater up to their door handles.
Massive eruption from icy volcanic comet detected in solar system
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A bizarre, volcanic comet has violently erupted, spewing out more than 1 million tons of gas, ice and the “potential building blocks of life” into the solar system.
The volatile comet, known as 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann (29P), is around 37 miles (60 kilometers) wide and takes around 14.9 years to orbit the sun. 29P is believed to be the most volcanically active comet in the solar system. It is one of around 100 comets, known as “centaurs,” that have been pushed from the Kuiper Belt — a ring of icy comets that lurk beyond Neptune — into a closer orbit around the sun between those of Jupiter and Neptune, according to NASA (opens in new tab).
On Nov. 22, an amateur astronomer named Patrick Wiggins noticed that 29P had drastically increased in brightness, according to Spaceweather.com (opens in new tab). Subsequent observations made by other astronomers revealed that this spike in luminosity was the result of a massive volcanic eruption — the second largest seen on 29P in the last 12 years, according to the British Astronomical Association (opens in new tab) (BAA). The largest eruption during this time was a huge outburst in September 2021.
An eruption of this size is “pretty rare,” Cai Stoddard-Jones (opens in new tab), a doctoral candidate at Cardiff University in the U.K. who took a follow-up image of 29P’s eruption, told Live Scence. “It’s [also] difficult to say why this one is so big.”.
The explosion was followed by two smaller outbursts on Nov. 27 and Nov. 29, according to BAA.
Related: Watch the biggest-ever comet outburst spray dust across the cosmos
Unlike volcanoes on Earth, which eject scalding-hot magma and ash from the mantle, 29P spits out extremely cold gases and ice from its core. This unusual type of volcanic activity is known as cryovolcanism, or “cold volcanism.”
Cryovolcanic bodies, which include a handful of other comets and moons in the solar system such as Saturn’s Enceladus, Jupiter’s Europa and Neptune’s Triton, have a surface crust surrounding a mainly solid icy core, Richard Miles (opens in new tab), a BAA astronomer who has studied 29P, told Live Science. Over time, radiation from the sun can cause the comets’ icy interiors to sublime from solid to gas, which causes a buildup of pressure beneath the crust. When radiation from the sun also weakens the crust, that pressure causes the outer shell to crack, and cryomagma shoots out into space.
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The cryomagma from comets like 29P is mainly composed of carbon monoxide and nitrogen gas, as well as some icy solids and liquid hydrocarbons, which “may have provided some of the raw materials from which life originated on Earth,” NASA representatives wrote.
The ejecta from the most recent eruption of 29P stretched up to 34,800 miles (56,000 km) away from the comet and is traveling at speeds of up to 805 mph (1,295 km/h), according to BAA. The plume “probably comprised more than one million tons of ejecta,” Miles added.
Photographs of the erupting comet also show that the plume formed an irregular Pac-Man-like shape, which suggests the eruption originated from a single point or region on the comet’s surface, according to Spaceweather.com.
These observations back up previous research that suggests 29P’s eruptions are linked to its rotation. Miles and Stoddard-Jones believe that the comet’s slower rotation causes solar radiation to absorb more unevenly on the comet, triggering the eruptions. So far eruptions from the comet tend to match up with its 57-day rotation period, the researchers said.
Related: Volcanic eruptions on the moon happened much more recently than we thought
Researchers also suspect that 29P’s most explosive eruptions follow a cycle based on its orbit around the sun. A number of large eruptions were detected between 2008 and 2010, and now two massive explosions have occurred within the last two years, Miles said. It is therefore likely that there will be least one more major eruption from 29P by the end of 2023, he added.
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However, it is less clear how this longer eruption cycle is occurring, because unlike most other comets, which get closer to the sun during a specific period of their orbits, 29P has a largely circular orbit, meaning it never gets much closer to the sun than its average distance, Stoddard-Jones said.
29P has largely been ignored by the astronomical community since its discovery in 1927, but as new evidence emerges about its unusual volcanic activity it is starting to be taken more seriously, Miles said. “Clearly there is something new to be discovered in studying 29P.”
The James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled to take a closer look at 29P early next year, he added.
NASA Says Shallow Lakes in the Icy Crust of Jupiter’s Moon Europa Could Erupt
This illustration depicts a plume of water vapor that could potentially be emitted from the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. New research sheds light on what plumes, if they do exist, could reveal about lakes that may be inside the moon’s crust. Credit: NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI
New scientific research makes hypotheses that
Europa is considered one of the most promising places in our solar system to find present-day environments suitable for some form of life beyond Earth.
Scientists are almost certain that a salty-water ocean thought to contain twice as much water as Earth’s oceans combined is hidden beneath the icy surface of Europa. And like Earth, Europa is thought to also contain a rocky mantle and iron core.
Very strong evidence suggests Europa’s ocean is in contact with rock. This is significant because life as we know it requires three essential “ingredients”: liquid water, an energy source, and organic compounds to use as the building blocks for biological processes.
Europa could have all three of these ingredients. And there would have been plenty of time for life to begin and evolve there, as its ocean may have existed for the whole age of the solar system.
However, scientists think the ocean isn’t the only water on Europa. Based on observations from NASA’s Galileo orbiter, they believe the moon’s icy shell could contain salty liquid reservoirs – some of them close to the surface of the ice and some many miles below.
The more scientists understand about the water that Europa may be holding, the better chance they will know where to look for it when NASA sends Europa Clipper in 2024 to conduct a detailed investigation. The spacecraft will orbit Jupiter and use its suite of sophisticated instruments to gather science data as it flies by the moon about 50 times.
Now, research is helping scientists better understand what the subsurface lakes in Europa may look like and how they behave. A key finding in a paper published recently in Planetary Science Journal supports the longstanding idea that water could potentially erupt above the surface of Europa either as plumes of vapor or as cryovolcanic activity (think: flowing, slushy ice rather than molten lava).
The computer modeling in the paper goes further, showing that if there are eruptions on Europa, they likely come from shallow, wide lakes embedded in the ice and not from the global ocean far below.
“We demonstrated that plumes or cryolava flows could mean there are shallow liquid reservoirs below, which Europa Clipper would be able to detect,” said Elodie Lesage, lead author of the research and Europa scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (
This color view of Jupiter’s moon Europa was captured by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. Scientists are studying processes that affect the moon’s surface as they prepare to explore the icy body. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute
Different Depths, Different Ice
Lesage’s computer modeling lays out a blueprint for what scientists might find inside the ice if they were to observe eruptions at the surface. According to her models, they likely would detect reservoirs relatively close to the surface, in the upper 2.5 to 5 miles (4 to 8 kilometers) of the crust, where the ice is coldest and most brittle.
That’s because the subsurface ice there doesn’t allow for expansion: As the pockets of water freeze and expand, they could break the surrounding ice and trigger eruptions, much like a can of soda in a freezer explodes. And pockets of water that do burst through would likely be wide and flat like pancakes.
Reservoirs deeper in the ice layer – with floors more than 5 miles (8 kilometers) below the crust – would push against warmer ice surrounding them as they expand. That ice is soft enough to act as a cushion, absorbing the pressure rather than bursting. Rather than acting like a can of soda, these pockets of water would behave more like a liquid-filled balloon, where the balloon simply stretches as the liquid within it freezes and expands.
Sensing Firsthand
Scientists on the Europa Clipper mission can use this research when the spacecraft arrives at Europa in 2030. For example, the radar instrument – called Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface (REASON) – is one of the key instruments that will be used to look for water pockets in the ice.
“The new work shows that water bodies in the shallow subsurface could be unstable if stresses exceed the strength of the ice and could be associated with plumes rising above the surface,” said Don Blankenship, of the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics in Austin, Texas, who leads the radar instrument team. “That means REASON could be able to see water bodies in the same places that you see plumes.”
Europa Clipper will carry other instruments that will be able to test the theories of the new research. The science cameras will be able to make high-resolution color and stereoscopic images of Europa; the thermal emission imager will use an infrared camera to map Europa’s temperatures and find clues about geologic activity – including cryovolcanism. If plumes are erupting, they could be observable by the ultraviolet spectrograph, the instrument that analyzes ultraviolet light.
Reference: “Simulation of Freezing Cryomagma Reservoirs in Viscoelastic Ice Shells” by Elodie Lesage, Hélène Massol, Samuel M. Howell and Frédéric Schmidt, 21 July 2022, Planetary Science Journal.
DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ac75bf
More About the Mission
Missions such as Europa Clipper contribute to the field of astrobiology. This is an interdisciplinary research field that studies the conditions of distant worlds that could harbor life as we know it. Although Europa Clipper is not a life-detection mission, it will conduct a detailed exploration of Europa and investigate whether the icy moon, with its subsurface ocean, has the capability to support life. Understanding Europa’s habitability will help scientists better understand how life developed on Earth and the potential for finding life beyond our planet.
Managed by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with APL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. APL designed the main spacecraft body in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.
Sharpest Earth-Based Images of Jupiter’s Moons Europa and Ganymede Reveal Their Icy Landscape
Jupiter’s moon Europa captured by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Credit: ESO/King & Fletcher
The most detailed images ever taken of two of
Europa is named for a woman who, in Greek mythology, was abducted by the god Zeus – Jupiter in Roman mythology. It may be the most promising place in our solar system to find present-day environments suitable for some form of life beyond Earth. With an equatorial diameter of 1,940 miles, Europa is about 90 percent the size of Earth’s Moon. It orbits Jupiter every 3.5 days.
As some of the sharpest images of Jupiter’s moons ever acquired from a ground-based observatory, they reveal new insights into the processes shaping the chemical composition of these massive moons – including geological features such as the long rift-like linae cutting across Europa’s surface.
Ganymede and Europa are two of the four largest moons orbiting Jupiter, a quartet known as the Galilean satellites. While Europa is quite similar in size to our own Moon, Ganymede is the largest moon in the entire Solar System.
The Leicester team, led by PhD student Oliver King, used the European Southern Observatory’s
The new observations recorded the amount of sunlight reflected from Europa and Ganymede’s surfaces at different infrared wavelengths, producing a reflectance spectrum. These reflectance spectra are analyzed by developing a computer model that compares each observed spectrum to spectra of different substances that have been measured in laboratories.
The images and spectra of Europa, published in the Planetary Science Journal, reveal that Europa’s crust is mainly composed of frozen water ice with non-ice materials contaminating the surface.
Jupiter’s moon Ganymede captured by ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Credit: ESO/King & Fletcher
Oliver King from the University of Leicester School of Physics and Astronomy said: “We mapped the distributions of the different materials on the surface, including sulphuric
“The modeling found that there could be a variety of different salts present on the surface, but suggested that infrared spectroscopy alone is generally unable to identify which specific types of salt are present.”
Ganymede is not only Jupiter’s largest moon, but the largest moon in our solar system. In fact, it is bigger than the planet Mercury and the dwarf planet
Oliver King adds: “This has allowed us to carry out detailed mapping of Europa and Ganymede, observing features on their surfaces smaller than 150 km across – all at distances over 600 million kilometers from the Earth. Mapping at this fine scale was previously only possible by sending spacecraft all the way to Jupiter to observe the moons up-close.”
Professor Leigh Fletcher, who supervised the VLT study, is a member of the science teams for ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) and NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which will explore Ganymede and Europa up close in the early 2030s. JUICE is scheduled to launch in 2023, and University of Leicester scientists play key roles in its proposed study of Jupiter’s atmosphere, magnetosphere, and moons.
Professor Fletcher said: “These ground-based observations whet the appetite for our future exploration of Jupiter’s moons.”
“Planetary missions operate under tough operating constraints and we simply can’t cover all the terrain that we’d like to, so difficult decisions must be taken about which areas of the moons’ surfaces deserve the closest scrutiny. Observations at 150-km scale such as those provided by the VLT, and ultimately its enormous successor the ELT (Extremely Large Telescope), help to provide a global context for the spacecraft observations.”
References:
“Global Modelling of Ganymede’s Surface Composition: Near-IR Mapping from VLT/SPHERE” by Oliver King and Leigh N. Fletcher, Accepted, JGR: Planets.
arXiv:2209.01976“Compositional mapping of Europa using MCMC modelling of Near-IR VLT/SPHERE and Galileo/NIMS observations” by Oliver King, Leigh N. Fletcher and Nicolas Ligier (2022), 31 March 2022, Planetary Science Journal.
DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ac596dThis work was funded by a Royal Society Enhancement Award number 180071 to Professor Leigh Fletcher in the School of Physics and Astronomy, entitled “The diversity of Jupiter’s Galilean moons: Earth-based pathfinder observations in preparation for JUICE.”
Sharpest Earth-based images of Europa and Ganymede reveal their icy landscapes
The cocktail of chemicals that make up the frozen surfaces on two of Jupiter’s largest moons are revealed in the most detailed images ever taken of them by a telescope on Earth.
Planetary scientists from the University of Leicester’s School of Physics and Astronomy have unveiled new images of Europa and Ganymede, two future destinations for exciting new missions to the Jovian system.
Some of the sharpest images of Jupiter’s moons ever acquired from a ground-based observatory, they reveal new insights into the processes shaping the chemical composition of these massive moons—including geological features such as the long rift-like linae cutting across Europa’s surface.
Ganymede and Europa are two of the four largest moons orbiting Jupiter, known as the Galilean moons. Whilst Europa is quite similar in size to our own Moon, Ganymede is the largest moon in the whole Solar System.
The Leicester team, led by Ph.D. student Oliver King, used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile to observe and map the surfaces of these two worlds.
The new observations recorded the amount sunlight reflected from Europa and Ganymede’s surfaces at different infrared wavelengths, producing a reflectance spectrum. These reflectance spectra are analyzed by developing a computer model that compares each observed spectrum to spectra of different substances that have been measured in laboratories.
The images and spectra of Europa, published in the Planetary Science Journal, reveal that Europa’s crust is mainly composed of frozen water ice with non-ice materials contaminating the surface.
Oliver King from the University of Leicester School of Physics and Astronomy says that they “mapped the distributions of the different materials on the surface, including sulfuric acid frost which is mainly found on the side of Europa that is most heavily bombarded by the gases surrounding Jupiter.”
“The modeling found that there could be a variety of different salts present on the surface, but suggested that infrared spectroscopy alone is generally unable to identify which specific types of salt are present.”
The observations of Ganymede, published in the journal JGR: Planets, show how the surface is made up to two main types of terrain: young areas with large amounts of water ice, and ancient areas mainly consisting of a dark gray material, the composition of which is unknown.
The icy areas (blue in the images) include Ganymede’s polar caps and craters—where an impact event has exposed the fresh clean ice of Ganymede’s crust. The team mapped how the size of the grains of ice on Ganymede varies across the surface and the possible distributions of a variety of different salts, some of which may originate from within Ganymede itself.
Located at high altitude in northern Chile, and with mirrors over 8 meters across, the Very Large Telescope is one of the most powerful telescope facilities in the world.
Oliver King adds that “this has allowed us to carry out detailed mapping of Europa and Ganymede, observing features on their surfaces smaller than 150 km across—all at distances over 600 million kilometers from the Earth. Mapping at this fine scale was previously only possible by sending spacecraft all the way to Jupiter to observe the moons up-close.”
Professor Leigh Fletcher, who supervised the VLT study, is a member of the science teams for ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) and NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which will explore Ganymede and Europa up close in the early 2030s. JUICE is scheduled to launch in 2023, and University of Leicester scientists play key roles in its proposed study of Jupiter’s atmosphere, magnetosphere, and moons.
Professor Fletcher says that “these ground-based observations whet the appetite for our future exploration of Jupiter’s moons.”
“Planetary missions operate under tough operating constraints and we simply can’t cover all the terrain that we’d like to, so difficult decisions must be taken about which areas of the moons’ surfaces deserve the closest scrutiny. Observations at 150-km scale such as those provided by the VLT, and ultimately its enormous successor the ELT (Extremely Large Telescope), help to provide a global context for the spacecraft observations.”
Hubble finds evidence of persistent water vapor in one hemisphere of Europa
More information:
Oliver King et al, Compositional Mapping of Europa Using MCMC Modeling of Near-IR VLT/SPHERE and Galileo/NIMS Observations, The Planetary Science Journal (2022). DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ac596d
Oliver King et al, Compositional Mapping of Europa Using MCMC Modeling of Near-IR VLT/SPHERE and Galileo/NIMS Observations, The Planetary Science Journal (2022). DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ac596d
Oliver King et al, Global Modeling of Ganymede’s Surface Composition: Near-IR Mapping from VLT/SPHERE, JGR: Planets (2022). doi.org/10.1029/2022JE007323
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NASA’s Juno Gets Highest-Resolution View of Puzzling Region of Jupiter’s Icy Moon Europa
Surface features of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa are revealed in an image obtained by Juno’s Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) during the spacecraft’s September 29, 2022, flyby. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI
Observations from the Juno spacecraft’s pass of the moon provided the first close-up in over two decades of this ocean world, resulting in remarkable imagery and unique science.
The highest-resolution photo
The image covers about 93 miles (150 kilometers) by 125 miles (200 kilometers) of Europa’s surface, revealing a region crisscrossed with a network of fine grooves and double ridges (pairs of long parallel lines indicating elevated features in the ice). Near the upper right of the image, as well as just to the right and below center, are dark stains possibly linked to something from below erupting onto the surface. Below center and to the right is a surface feature that recalls a musical quarter note, measuring 42 miles (67 kilometers) north-south by 23 miles (37 kilometers) east-west. The white dots in the image are signatures of penetrating high-energy particles from the severe radiation environment around the moon.
The complex, ice-covered surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft during a flyby on September 29, 2022. At closest approach, the spacecraft came within a distance of about 219 miles (352 kilometers). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SWRI/MSSS
Juno’s Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) – a star camera used to orient the spacecraft – obtained the black-and-white image during the spacecraft’s flyby of Europa on September 29, 2022, at a distance of about 256 miles (412 kilometers). With a resolution that ranges from 840 to 1,115 feet (256 to 340 meters) per pixel, the image was captured as Juno raced past at about 15 miles per second (24 kilometers per second) or 54,000 mph (86,000 km/h) over a part of the surface that was in nighttime, dimly lit by “Jupiter shine” – sunlight reflecting off Jupiter’s cloud tops.
Designed for low-light conditions, the SRU has also proven itself a valuable science tool, discovering shallow lightning in Jupiter’s atmosphere, imaging Jupiter’s enigmatic ring system (see image below), and now providing a glimpse of some of Europa’s most fascinating geologic formations.
This high-resolution image of Jupiter’s main dust ring was collected by the Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) navigation camera aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The image was taken from inside the ring looking out as Juno flew between Jupiter and the radiation belts during the spacecraft’s 36th close flyby on September 2, 2021. The brightest thin dust bands are associated with the orbits of Jupiter’s small moons, Metis and Adrastea. The image is at a resolution of nearly 20 miles (32 kilometers) per pixel. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“This image is unlocking an incredible level of detail in a region not previously imaged at such resolution and under such revealing illumination conditions,” said Heidi Becker, the lead co-investigator for the SRU. “The team’s use of a star-tracker camera for science is a great example of Juno’s groundbreaking capabilities. These features are so intriguing. Understanding how they formed – and how they connect to Europa’s history – informs us about internal and external processes shaping the icy crust.”
It won’t just be Juno’s SRU scientists who will be busy analyzing data in the coming weeks. During Juno’s 45th orbit around Jupiter, all of the spacecraft’s science instruments were collecting data both during the Europa flyby and then again as Juno flew over Jupiter’s poles a short 7 ½ hours later.
“Juno started out completely focused on Jupiter. The team is really excited that during our extended mission, we expanded our investigation to include three of the four Galilean satellites and Jupiter’s rings,” said Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “With this flyby of Europa, Juno has now seen close-ups of two of the most interesting moons of Jupiter, and their ice shell crusts look very different from each other. In 2023, Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system, will join the club.” In June 2021, Juno sailed by Jupiter’s moon Ganymede – the solar system’s largest moon.
Europa is the solar system’s sixth-largest moon with about 90% of the equatorial diameter of Earth’s moon. Scientists are confident a salty ocean lies below a miles-thick ice shell, sparking questions about the potential habitability of the ocean. In the early 2030s, NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will arrive and strive to answer these questions about Europa’s habitability. The data from the Juno flyby provides a preview of what that mission will reveal.
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