This composite image shows suspected plumes of water vapor erupting at the 7 o'clock position off the limb of Jupiter's moon Europa. The plumes, photographed by NASA's Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, were seen in silhouette as the moon passed in front of Jupiter. Hubble's ultraviolet sensitivity allowed for the features, rising over 100 miles above Europa's icy surface, to be discerned. The water is believed to come from a subsurface ocean on Europa. The Hubble data were taken on January 26, 2014. The image of Europa, superimposed on the Hubble data, is assembled from data from the Galileo and Voyager missions.
Credits
NASA, ESA, W. Sparks (STScI), and the USGS Astrogeology Science Center| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | Europa |
| Object Description | Moon of Jupiter |
| Distance | The position of Jupiter and Europa changes as they and Earth travel on their orbits through the solar system. Europa, orbiting Jupiter, was approximately 4.3 AU (400 million miles or 640 million kilometers) from Earth at the time of these observations. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | Data were provided by HST proposals , , and : W. Sparks (STScI), S. Deustua (STScI), K. Hand (JPL), M. McGrath (SETI Institute), and E. Bergeron and M. Cracraft (STScI). |
| Instrument | HST>STIS/MAMA |
| Exposure Dates | January 26, 2014 (Exposure Time: 2,023 seconds) |
| Filters | F25SRF2 (150nm UV) |
| About The Image | |
| Color Info | This image was made by HST's STIS MAMA instrument with the F25SRF2 filter (150nm UV). Color was added to the grayscale image using a blue color mapping. A separate grayscale image of Europa, produced using data from the NASA Galileo and Voyager missions, was superimposed to scale. Blue: F25SRF2 |
| Compass Image |  |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
