New evidence of water plumes on Jupiter’s moon EuropaMore evidence of possible water plumes erupting from the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa has been spotted using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the US space agency said Monday. This composite image released by NASA September 26, 2016 shows suspected plumes of water vapor erupting at the 7 o’clock position(Bottom-L) off the limb of Jupiter’s moon Europa. “Today, we are presenting new Hubble evidence for water vapor plumes being expelled from the icy surface of Europa,” William Sparks, astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore told reporters on a conference call. Only one other moon is known in the solar system — Saturn’s moon Enceladus — to have icy plumes, based on data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. NASA’s next generation space telescope, known as the James Webb Space Telescope, launches in 2018, and it will also hunt for signs of water on Europa using infrared wavelengths of light.

Source: Manila Bulletin September 27, 2016 06:45 UTC