Hubble data suggests water plumes on Europa

Dec. 12 (UPI) -- NASA's Hubble telescope has observed water vapor, and possibly large plumes of water, on Jupiter's moon Europa, one of the few places considered to possibly harbor alien life.

Images from the Hubble telescope show an auroral glow, caused by the presence of hydrogen and oxygen in the moon's atmosphere, possibly from water molecules by broken apart by excited electrons.

If confirmed as water plumes, it is mean Europa' subsurface ocean can be accessed from the surface without drilling through layers of ice.

“By far the simplest explanation for this water vapor is that it erupted from plumes on the surface of Europa,” said lead author Lorenz Roth of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

In 2005, NASA's Cassini spacecraft detected the presence of water vapor and dust ejected from the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus, making Europa the second place in the solar system, outside Earth, to have water.

The geysers appear to be short-lived, but could shoot extremely high. They vanish when Europa is closest to Jupiter and reappear when it is at its farthest from its planet, suggesting, as expected, that tidal forces drive the spouting of the water.

"The apparent plume variability supports a key prediction that Europa should tidally flex by a significant amount if it has a subsurface ocean," said Kurt Retherford, also of Southwest Research Institute.

Europa's stronger gravitational force pulled the water back to the surface, where as on Enceladus the dust and water escaped the atmosphere.

The observations were made in December 2012 and were published in Science journal. The results were also reported at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

[NASA] [American Geophysical Union]