Another welcome diversion from the HW usual (which has been getting dreadfully dull of late).
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected water being ejected from Europa. NASA posted a terrific artist's impression:
Here's the picture showing where it was detected - click to enlarge it:
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.You can read more about it here.
Image credit: NASA/ESA/L. Roth/SWRI/University of Cologne
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