Related papers: Spectral Decomposition Reveals Surface Processes o…
Much of the geologic activity preserved on Europa's icy surface has been attributed to tidal deformation, mainly due to Europa's eccentric orbit. Although the surface is geologically young (30 - 80 Myr), there is little information as to…
The deep (~100 km) ocean of Europa, Jupiter's moon, covered by a thick icy shell, is one of the most probable places in the solar system to find extraterrestrial life. Yet, its ocean dynamics and its interaction with the ice cover have…
Remote sensing observations indicate that Europa is surrounded by a tenuous atmosphere. Furthermore, recent observations and historic data from Galileo hint at the occurrence of water vapour eruptions originating from the interior that…
Roth et al (2014a) reported evidence for plumes of water venting from a southern high latitude region on Europa - spectroscopic detection of off-limb line emission from the dissociation products of water. Here, we present Hubble Space…
We present best-fit values of porosity -- and the corresponding effective thermal inertiae -- determined from three different depths in Europa's near-subsurface (~1-20 cm). The porosity of the upper ~20 cm of Europa's subsurface varies…
Auroral emissions provide opportunities to study the tenuous atmospheres of Solar System satellites, revealing the presence and abundance of molecular and atomic species as well as their spatial and temporal variability. Far-UV aurorae have…
Recent observations from the Hubble Space Telescope show a mid-UV absorption feature localized to leading hemisphere chaos regions on Europa. The same regions were previously found to have a visible absorption at 450 nm that was attributed…
We have developed a characterization of the geological evolution of the Earths atmosphere and surface in order to model the observable spectra of an Earth-like planet through its geological history. These calculations are designed to guide…
Visible and near-infrared spectra of transiting hot Jupiter planets have recently been observed, revealing some of the atmospheric constituents of their atmospheres. In the near future, it is probable that primary and secondary eclipse…
The presence of a hydrosphere on Europa raises questions about its habitability, and studies of its volatile inventory can provide insight into its formation process. Different scenarios suggest that Europa's volatiles could be derived from…
Europa's icy surface likely overlies an ocean, but the ice thickness is not known. Here we model the temporal growth of a Europan shell of pure ice subject to varying ice-ocean heat fluxes, ice rheologies, and internal heating rates. Both…
Images of Europa's surface taken by the Galileo Solid State Imager (SSI) show smooth features measuring a few kilometers, potentially resulting from eruptions of low-viscosity material such as liquid cryomagma. We estimated the volume of…
The search for Earth-like extrasolar planets is in part motivated by the potential detection of spectroscopic biomarkers. Spectroscopic biomarkers are spectral features that are either consistent with life, indicative of habitability, or…
Neutrino-neutrino scattering could have a large secret component that would turn neutrinos within a supernova (SN) core into a self-coupled fluid. Neutrino transport within the SN core, emission from its surface, expansion into space, and…
We report results of a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) campaign with the Advanced Camera for Surveys to observe Europa at eastern elongation, i.e. Europa's leading side, on 2008 June 29. With five consecutive HST orbits, we constrain Europa's…
As photosynthesis on Earth produces the primary signatures of life that can be detected astronomically at the global scale, a strong focus of the search for extrasolar life will be photosynthesis, particularly photosynthesis that has…
The circulation in Europa's ocean determines the degree of thermal, mechanical and chemical coupling between the ice shell and the silicate mantle. Using global direct numerical simulations, we investigate the effect of heterogeneous tidal…
Thermal measurements constrain the physical properties of icy satellite surfaces, including grain size, porosity, and regolith structure. On Europa, analyses of the Galileo Photopolarimeter-Radiometer (PPR) dataset revealed thermal inertia…
We constrain Europa's tenuous atmosphere on the subsolar hemisphere by combining two sets of observations: oxygen emissions at 1304 {\AA} and 1356 {\AA} from Hubble Space Telescope (HST) spectral images, and Galileo magnetic field…
A weak absorption feature at 2.07 \textmu m on Europa's trailing hemisphere has been suggested to arise from radiolytic processing of an endogenic salt, possibly sourced from the interior ocean. However, if the genesis of this feature…