A Window Into the Sub Ice Ocean of Jupiter’s Moon, Europa

If you could lick the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, you would actually be sampling a bit of the ocean beneath. A new paper by Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and Kevin Hand from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, details the strongest evidence yet that salty water from the vast liquid ocean beneath Europa’s frozen exterior actually makes its way to the surface. 

The finding, based on some of the best data of its kind since NASA’s Galileo mission (1989 to 2003) to study Jupiter and its moons, suggests there is a chemical exchange between the ocean and surface, making the ocean a richer chemical environment. The work is described in a paper that has been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. 

The exchange between the ocean and the surface, Brown said, “means that energy might be going into the ocean, which is important in terms of the possibilities for life there. It also means that if you’d like to know what’s in the ocean, you can just go to the surface and scrape some off.” …

(read more: Jet Propulsion Lab.)         (image: NASA/JPL-CalTech)

(Source: rhamphotheca)

[official media press release]

(Source: invaderxan)

The Treatise (Under Construction; Title Pending)

I’m going to continually be revising this and sharing it with all of you every step of the way. Feel free to comment or discuss. Please, do not ask me not to cover religion in this treatise. I’m formulating it not as a means by which to demonize religion as a whole or bash any particular institution of practicing theology (whatever the hell that means).

Material will be sourced and I will provide verbiage to segue into the following segment.

My thoughts and introspective into this will be recorded in segments yet to be developed as this dissertation is compiled. I encourage any comments or questions but please keep in mind that I have just started this and I have no deadline in terms of its completion. I want to include as much as possible but be as thorough and straightforward. Less time dwelling on things we can’t change and more time understanding how we can move forward from here.

To some, it may seem an honorable or respectful thing, not to exploit the superimposition of the literal interpretation of Biblical scripture and peel back the layers of ignorance and stagnation it casts upon the human species, and as a causal interaction, the world, this planet.

It still casts that same shadow of deceit, willful ignorance, blind faith and unscientific teachings unto the masses, popularizing it and trying to fit in with social norms as if it’s bolder and prouder to be a human who refutes evidence and stands behind their neurological impediment to believe blindly, clasping hands together to engage with inner-monologue in order to make sense of the natural world.

We are a species prime for a revolutionary evolution of the mind in order to move forward and represent ourselves and this planet as the rightful stewards who became a compliment to the biosphere, not the cause of its turbulence to which human lives are lost, species extinction intensifies and our climate is rapidly changing, putting our modern day intelligence to the test.

All hands in. No more praying. There’s no more time for mysticism, pseudoscience or fantasies sprung from religious traditions born out of our previous adolescence. It’s time for action. No one is coming to rescue us from our lack of understanding as we “respectfully tolerate” the religious “rights” of others.

Here’s a 21st century experiment we ought to try: put prayer through the rigors of the same uniform scientific processes as any hypothesis requires. If everything checks out, great. But if it doesn’t, and it won’t…would that even be enough to shake those out of this comforting delusion so that we have more members of the human species working toward common goals, rather than sticking our heads in the sand, waiting on a messiah to free us from our natural mammalian instincts or “sins”?

We are on this planet. This one, tiny planet. And long before we even knew what we were doing or were capable of, some people wrote a book. That book was used as a tool to persecute “freedom of inquiry” or “truth-seeking.” The settings and era of time have changed, but the society and the rampant Christian influence is abundant, overstepping its boundaries and running wild over North America and all areas of this planet (susceptible to the wielders of its political power), stunting the growth of the next potential influential people in human history. There are those laying down their lives for overfishing, deforestation, nuclear weapons, displacement of indigenous tribes, rape, genocide, starvation, hunger, public education, globalization, corporate corruption, greed, inhumane practices, marriage between two individuals, sexual orientation/preference, stereotypes, racism and freedom.

This is just another pillar to that: scientific literacy and the detachment away from any and all claims made by any religious institution on the basis that their hypothesis’ or divine superimposition are derived from scientific experiment and observation, not religious subtext and literal interpretation of Scripture. Some of the greatest minds of our short epoch on this planet have been stifled, attacked, suppressed, outcast, exiled, imprisoned, tortured, raped, murdered and slandered because their impenetrable work undermined what the Bible already presupposed. It continues to this day. I believe it’s time for the Scripture to stand trial and be put in its philosophical place in human history; and the rights of their institutions to either be expunged or sent through rigorous standards of academic practice as to not dissuade members of the human species away from the truth we all seek and the answers we’ve achieved thus far.

“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”
― Daniel Patrick Moynihan

“Science has afforded man an unprecedented mastery over nature. But to those who do not regard the conquest of nature as a proper end in itself, science has never appeared as an unmixed blessing. In the beginning, men who viewed it with distrust were very numerous and influential, and wherever they held power scientific thought was quickly subordinated to their authority. Gradually their number and influence diminished as the value to mankind of free scientific inquiry became apparent, and the effectiveness with which they could enforce their authority weakened. A final attempt to subordinate science to religion was made a century ago when the doctrine of organic evolution was propounded, and that attempt merely added to the prestige of science. As a result we became accustomed to seeing the protests of the antiscientific treated with impatience if not contempt.

But within the last decade events have created a new alarm concerning the unchecked progress of scientific knowledge. This time it is not the church but the state which feels morally obliged to impose external limitations upon the freedom of scientific inquiry and the communication of knowledge and opinion. This time the universities are impelled by public opinion and governmental policies to reconsider the scope of academic freedom, rather than by philosophical opinion and theological policies. But it is not the issues which are new, nor even the forms in which they confront us; only the center around which antiscientific forces rally has been changed. The issues are very similar to those which were fought out in the time of Galileo; the stakes are not much higher now than they were then, and the balance of power between the two sides is about the same as before.

Whether or not the fears of those who would now save us from science are any better grounded than were those of the men who opposed its unrestrained advance at the very beginning remains to be seen.”

Stillman Drake | Discoveries and Opinons of Galileo (1957)
Text from the working Treatise (above, here, link) have come from the above author and his publication of Italian-English translated transmissions and writings of Galileo.

Hydrogen Peroxide Could Feed Life on Europa

According to research by NASA astronomers using the next-generation optics of the 10-meter Keck II telescope, Jupiter’s ice-encrusted moon Europa has hydrogen peroxide across much of the surface of its leading hemisphere, a compound that could potentially provide energy for life if it has found its way into the moon’s subsurface ocean.

“Europa has the liquid water and elements, and we think that compounds like peroxide might be an important part of the energy requirement,” said JPL scientist Kevin Hand, the paper’s lead author. “The availability of oxidants like peroxide on Earth was a critical part of the rise of complex, multicellular life.”

The paper, co-authored by Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, analyzed data in the near-infrared range of light from Europa using the Keck II Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, over four nights in September 2011. The highest concentration of peroxide found was on the side of Europa that always leads in its orbit around Jupiter, with a peroxide abundance of 0.12 percent relative to water. (For perspective, this is roughly 20 times more diluted than the hydrogen peroxide mixture available at drug stores.) The concentration of peroxide in Europa’s ice then drops off to nearly zero on the hemisphere of Europa that faces backward in its orbit.

Hydrogen peroxide was first detected on Europa by NASA’s Galileo mission, which explored the Jupiter system from 1995 to 2003, but Galileo observations were of a limited region. The new Keck data show that peroxide is widespread across much of the surface of Europa, and the highest concentrations are reached in regions where Europa’s ice is nearly pure water with very little sulfur contamination.

The peroxide is created by the intense radiation processing of Europa’s surface ice that comes from the moon’s location within Jupiter’s strong magnetic field.

“The Galileo measurements gave us tantalizing hints of what might be happening all over the surface of Europa, and we’ve now been able to quantify that with our Keck telescope observations,” Brown said. “What we still don’t know is how the surface and the ocean mix, which would provide a mechanism for any life to use the peroxide.”

The scientists think hydrogen peroxide is an important factor for the habitability of the global liquid water ocean under Europa’s icy crust because hydrogen peroxide decays to oxygen when mixed into liquid water. “At Europa, abundant compounds like peroxide could help to satisfy the chemical energy requirement needed for life within the ocean, if the peroxide is mixed into the ocean,” said Hand.

What’s notable to add, on March 26, 2013, the U.S. President signed a bill that would increase the budget for NASA’s planetary science program as well as provide $75 million for the exploration of Europa. Exactly how the funds will be used isn’t clear — perhaps for components on the proposed Europa Clipper mission? — but it’s a step in the right direction for learning more about this increasingly intriguing world. Read more on SETI’s Destination: Europa blog.

distant-traveller:

Mapping the chemistry needed for life at Europa

A new paper led by a NASA researcher shows that hydrogen peroxide is abundant across much of the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. The authors argue that if the peroxide on the surface of Europa mixes into the ocean below, it could be an important energy supply for simple forms of life, if life were to exist there. The paper was published online recently in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“Life as we know it needs liquid water, elements like carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur, and it needs some form of chemical or light energy to get the business of life done,” said Kevin Hand, the paper’s lead author, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “Europa has the liquid water and elements, and we think that compounds like peroxide might be an important part of the energy requirement. The availability of oxidants like peroxide on Earth was a critical part of the rise of complex, multicellular life.”

The paper, co-authored by Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, analyzed data in the near-infrared range of light from Europa, using the Keck II Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, over four nights in September 2011. The highest concentration of peroxide found was on the side of Europa that always leads in its orbit around Jupiter, with a peroxide abundance of 0.12 percent relative to water. (For perspective, this is roughly 20 times more diluted than the hydrogen peroxide mixture available at drug stores.) The concentration of peroxide in Europa’s ice then drops off to nearly zero on the hemisphere of Europa that faces backward in its orbit.

Hydrogen peroxide was first detected on Europa by NASA’s Galileo mission, which explored the Jupiter system from 1995 to 2003, but Galileo observations were of a limited region. The new results show that peroxide is widespread across much of the surface of Europa, and the highest concentrations are reached in regions where Europa’s ice is nearly pure water with very little sulfur contamination. The peroxide is created by the intense radiation processing of Europa’s surface ice that comes from the moon’s location within Jupiter’s strong magnetic field.

“The Galileo measurements gave us tantalizing hints of what might be happening all over the surface of Europa, and we’ve now been able to quantify that with our Keck telescope observations,” Brown said. “What we still don’t know is how the surface and the ocean mix, which would provide a mechanism for any life to use the peroxide.”

The scientists think hydrogen peroxide is an important factor for the habitability of the global liquid water ocean under Europa’s icy crust because hydrogen peroxide decays to oxygen when mixed into liquid water. “At Europa, abundant compounds like peroxide could help to satisfy the chemical energy requirement needed for life within the ocean, if the peroxide is mixed into the ocean,” said Hand.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

spaceplasma:

Galileo view of an Earth-Moon conjunction

As Galileo receded from its second flyby of Earth on December 16 and 17, 1992, it captured this sequence of Earth rotating as the Moon zipped by on its orbit. There are 56 frames in total, each separated by 15 minutes, spanning about 14 hours.

Credit: NASA / JPL / Doug Ellison

Breaks in Jupiter’s Clouds are Swirling Hot Spots

In the swirling canopy of Jupiter’s atmosphere, cloudless patches are so exceptional that the big ones get the special name “hot spots.” Exactly how these clearings form and why they’re only found near the planet’s equator have long been mysteries. Now, using images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, scientists have found new evidence that hot spots in Jupiter’s atmosphere are created by a Rossby wave, a pattern also seen in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. The team found the wave responsible for the hot spots glides up and down through layers of the atmosphere like a carousel horse on a merry-go-round.

“This is the first time anybody has closely tracked the shape of multiple hot spots over a period of time, which is the best way to appreciate the dynamic nature of these features,” said the study’s lead author, David Choi, a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The paper is published online in the April issue of the journal Icarus.

Choi and his colleagues made time-lapse movies from hundreds of observations taken by Cassini during its flyby of Jupiter in late 2000, when the spacecraft made its closest approach to the planet. The movies zoom in on a line of hot spots between one of Jupiter’s dark belts and bright white zones, roughly 7 degrees north of the equator. Covering about two months (in Earth time), the study examines the daily and weekly changes in the sizes and shapes of the hot spots, each of which covers more area than North America, on average.

Much of what scientists know about hot spots came from NASA’s Galileo mission, which released an atmospheric probe that descended into a hot spot in 1995. This was the first, and so far only, in-situ investigation of Jupiter’s atmosphere.

“Galileo’s probe data and a handful of orbiter images hinted at the complex winds swirling around and through these hot spots, and raised questions about whether they fundamentally were waves, cyclones or something in between,” said Ashwin Vasavada, a paper co-author who is based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and who was a member of the Cassini imaging team during the Jupiter flyby. “Cassini’s fantastic movies now show the entire life cycle and evolution of hot spots in great detail.”

Because hot spots are breaks in the clouds, they provide windows into a normally unseen layer of Jupiter’s atmosphere, possibly all the way down to the level where water clouds can form. In pictures, hot spots appear shadowy, but because the deeper layers are warmer, hot spots are very bright at the infrared wavelengths where heat is sensed; in fact, this is how they got their name.

One hypothesis is that hot spots occur when big drafts of air sink in the atmosphere and get heated or dried out in the process. But the surprising regularity of hot spots has led some researchers to suspect there is an atmospheric wave involved. Typically, eight to 10 hot spots line up, roughly evenly spaced, with dense white plumes of cloud in between. This pattern could be explained by a wave that pushes cold air down, breaking up any clouds, and then carries warm air up, causing the heavy cloud cover seen in the plumes. Computer modeling has strengthened this line of reasoning.

From the Cassini movies, the researchers mapped the winds in and around each hot spot and plume, and examined interactions with vortices that pass by, in addition to wind gyres, or spiraling vortices, that merge with the hot spots. To separate these motions from the jet stream in which the hot spots reside, the scientists also tracked the movements of small “scooter” clouds, similar to cirrus clouds on Earth. This provided what may be the first direct measurement of the true wind speed of the jet stream, which was clocked at about 300 to 450 mph (500 to 720 kilometers per hour) — much faster than anyone previously thought. The hot spots amble at the more leisurely pace of about 225 mph (362 kilometers per hour).

By teasing out these individual movements, the researchers saw that the motions of the hot spots fit the pattern of a Rossby wave in the atmosphere. On Earth, Rossby waves play a major role in weather. For example, when a blast of frigid Arctic air suddenly dips down and freezes Florida’s crops, a Rossby wave is interacting with the polar jet stream and sending it off its typical course. The wave travels around our planet but periodically wanders north and south as it goes.

The wave responsible for the hot spots also circles the planet west to east, but instead of wandering north and south, it glides up and down in the atmosphere. The researchers estimate this wave may rise and fall 15 to 30 miles (24 to 50 kilometers) in altitude.

The new findings should help researchers understand how well the observations returned by the Galileo probe extend to the rest of Jupiter’s atmosphere. “And that is another step in answering more of the questions that still surround hot spots on Jupiter,” said Choi.

electricspacekoolaid:

New Evidence Found for Europa’s Vast Ocean

Based on new evidence from Jupiter’s moon Europa, astronomers hypothesize that chloride salts bubble up from the icy moon’s global liquid ocean and reach the frozen surface. Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Brown—known as the Pluto killer for discovering a Kuiper-belt object that led to the demotion of Pluto from planetary status—andKevin Hand from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have found the strongest evidence yet that salty water from the vast liquid ocean beneath Europa’s frozen exterior actually makes its way to the surface.

Hand emphasizes that, from an astrobiology standpoint, Europa is considered a premier target in the search for life beyond Earth; a NASA-funded study team led by JPL and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory have been working with the scientific community to identify options to explore Europa further. “If we’ve learned anything about life on Earth, it’s that where there’s liquid water, there’s generally life,” Hand says. “And of course our ocean is a nice salty ocean. Perhaps Europa’s salty ocean is also a wonderful place for life.”

“We now have evidence that Europa’s ocean is not isolated—that the ocean and the surface talk to each other and exchange chemicals,” says Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor and professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech. “That means that energy might be going into the ocean, which is important in terms of the possibilities for life there. It also means that if you’d like to know what’s in the ocean, you can just go to the surface and scrape some off.”

The finding, based on some of the first data of its kind since NASA’s Galileo mission (1989) to study Jupiter and its moons, suggests that there is a chemical exchange between the ocean and surface, making the ocean a richer chemical environment, and implies that learning more about the ocean could be as simple as analyzing the moon’s surface. “The surface ice is providing us a window into that potentially habitable ocean below,” says Hand, deputy chief scientist for solar system exploration at JPL.

Since the days of the Galileo mission, when the spacecraft showed that Europa was covered with an icy shell, scientists have debated the composition of Europa’s surface. The infrared spectrometer aboard Galileo was not capable of providing the detail needed to definitively identify some of the materials present on the surface. Now, using current technology on ground-based telescopes, Brown and Hand have identified a spectroscopic feature on Europa’s surface that indicates the presence of a magnesium sulfate salt, a mineral called epsomite, that could only originate from the ocean below.

“Magnesium should not be on the surface of Europa unless it’s coming from the ocean,” Brown says. “So that means ocean water gets onto the surface, and stuff on the surface presumably gets into the ocean water.”

Read

distant-traveller:

560 kilometers above Europa

This is the closest photograph ever taken of Europa by NASA’s spacecraft Galileo. Speculation that life-bearing oceans exist beneath Europa’s surface caused NASA to put Galileo on orbits that approach Europa. The above photograph shows new details on Europa’s surface, indicating that much of Europa as strewn with bumps and hills of ice laced with long fractures. Dark circular features may be impact craters.

Image credit: Galileo Project, JPL, NASA

Ambitious Mission to Jupiter’s Icy Moons Gets Science Instruments

An ambitious European mission that will launch a robotic probe to explore Jupiter’s icy moons in 2022 has got its science gear.

The European Space Agency has picked 11 instruments for the planned JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, or JUICE, spacecraft. The mission is expected to reach Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, in 2030 and spend at least three years studying the gas giant’s major moons Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede. The Jovian satellites are intriguing to scientists because they are thought to have vast oceans beneath their icy outer crust.

“Jupiter and its icy moons constitute a kind of mini-Solar System in their own right, offering European scientists and our international partners the chance to learn more about the formation of potentially habitable worlds around other stars,” said Dmitrij Titov, JUICE study scientist for ESA, in a Feb. 21 statement.

The JUICE mission will observe Jupiter’s atmosphere and magnetosphere, as well all four Galilean moons: Europa, Callisto, Ganymede and the volcanic Io. The spacecraft is expected to make 12 flybys of crater-covered Callisto, as well as two close passes of Europa in an attempt to gather the first-ever measurements of the thickness of that moon’s frozen crust, ESA officials said. [Amazing Space Missions to Jupiter]

The spacecraft will eventually end up orbiting Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system, to study its surface and internal structure. Ganymede is also the only known moon in the solar system with its own magnetic field, and JUICE will closely observe the moon’s interactions with Jupiter’s magnetosphere, ESA officials said.

The collection of approved instruments to help scientists complete these tasks includes cameras, spectrometers, a laser altimeter and an ice-penetrating radar, as well as a magnetometer, plasma and particle monitors, and radio science hardware, ESA officials said. Teams from 15 European countries and the United States and Japan will develop the tools.

“The suite of instruments addresses all of the mission’s science goals, from in-situ measurements of Jupiter’s vast magnetic field and plasma environment, to remote observations of the surfaces and interiors of the three icy moons,” Luigi Colangeli, coordinator of ESA’s solar system missions, said in a statement.

NASA will provide one of the instruments on JUICE — a radar to peer deep inside Jupiter’s icy moons — as well as the parts for two European instruments, the U.S. space agency said.

“NASA is thrilled to collaborate with ESA on this exciting mission to explore Jupiter and its icy moons,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington, in a statement. “Working together with ESA and our other international partners is key to enabling future scientific progress in our quest to understand the cosmos.”

While the JUICE mission will launch in 2022, NASA currently has another spacecraft en route to the giant planet. The Juno spacecraft launched in 2011 and is expected to arrive in orbit around Jupiter in July 2016 to study the planet’s magnetic field and peer through its cloudy atmosphere.

JUICE and Juno are the first missions dedicated to Jupiter exploration since NASA’s Galileo mission from 1989 to 2003.

Europa’s Icy Surface
Scientists suspect the icy crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa hides a deep liquid ocean. The ice and ocean together may be as deep as 100 km, covering a rocky surface below. The rocky part of the moon is likely similar in composition to Earth, which is made mostly of silicate rock.

The smoothness and low density of impact craters suggests the surface of the ice is young and probably being actively resurfaced. The dark linear stripes on Europa, clearly visible in the images above from the Galileo spacecraft in 1996, could be caused by cracking due to tidal motion of the liquid beneath. The cracks may allow water through to the surface, similar to magma erupting onto Earth’s sea floor along the mid-ocean ridges.

The image below is also based on data from Galileo, collected in 1995 and 1998.

Images: Top: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/University of Colorado. Bottom: NASA/JPL/Ted Stryk.

(Source: Wired)

What Makes Up the Moon
In 1992, the Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft made a pass by our planet’s closest companion, the moon. This mosaic of 53 images shows the different composition of rocks on the moon’s surface. Blue and orange colors represent lava flows, bright pink areas are highlands, and light blue colors indicate recent impact material with the youngest craters showing blue rays extending away from them.

Image: NASA/JPL

kidsneedscience:

Today marks the 400th anniversary of an important milestone in astronomy: German astronomer Simon Marius viewed the Andromeda Galaxy through a telescope, the first time it was viewed through a telescope, which he described looking like a ‘candle shining through a horn.’ Andromeda is the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way galaxy at 2.5 million light years away and has been the object of intense study since antiquity.

For his part, if Marius is ever remembered it is usually for his dispute with Galileo. In 1614 Marius described his discovery of the Jovian moons, pre-dating his discovery several days before Galileo’s date of discovery. Although the credit usually goes to Galileo, the names for the moons came from Marius:

Io, Europa, Ganimedes puer, atque Calisto
lascivo nimium perplacuere Iovi.
Io, Europa, the boy Ganymede, and Callisto greatly pleased lustful Jupiter.

Similarly, even though Messier credits Marius with the discovery of Andromeda as a galaxy, the Persian astronomer Abd al-Rhaman al-Sufi is now credited with the discovery over 600 years earlier!

Image of Andromeda courtesy NASA. Image of Marius in the public domain.

Volcanic Eruptions on Jupiter’s Moon Io Spotted from Earth

Image 1: Simulation of observations of Io using the W.M. Keck telescope and its current AO system, a next generation AO system mounted on the W.M. Telescope (KNGAO), and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) equipped with its AO system named (NFIRAOS).
CREDIT: F. Marchis

Image 2: Galileo spacecraft observations: a three-color global scale view of Io obtained on 3 July 1999 (Orbit 21) with a resolution of 1.3 km per pixel is shown on the left. The corresponding infrared image on the right was taken at 4.7 μm on October 16 2001 in daytime and has a spatial resolution of 30 km/pixel obtained . The near infrared picture shows the active volcanoes glowing thermal radiation.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Image 3: Observations of several bright & young eruptions on Jupiter’s moon Io detected at short wavelength (~ 2.1 mm) on the top and longer wavelength (~ 3.2 mm) on the bottom since 2004 using the W.M. Keck 10m telescope (May 2004, Aug 2007, Sep 2007, July 2009), the Gemini North 8m Telescope (Aug 2007) and the ESO VLT-Yepun 8m telescope (Feb 2007) and their adaptive optics systems.
CREDIT: F. Marchis

A team of SETI astronomers have proved it’s possible to see volcanic eruptions on Io — a moon of Jupiter — from our perch on Earth hundreds of millions of miles away.

Based on 44 nights of telescope observations, the group from the SETI Institute’s Carl Sagan Center showed it is possible to see fiery volcanoes spewing on Io (which is also known as Jupiter’s “Pizza Moon” for that reason). They can see features as small as 62 miles (100 kilometers) across using a particular telescope technique.

This means we don’t necessarily need a spacecraft to watch over Io’s volcanoes. That’s an important finding considering there won’t be another long-term mission at Jupiter until the 2030s, said SETI’s Franck Marchis, who led the team.

“We are not going to have a (Jupiter) space mission for several years,” said Marchis, the senior planetary astronomer of the Carl Sagan Center.

“If we want to continue to invest time in observing volcanic activity, we need to focus on ground-based telescopes. It’s not a community that has been used to it … our goal is really to motivate them to think about it.”

Image (Above): Quiescent activity of Io observed in 2010 & 2011 showing the several quasi-permanent eruptions in Lp band (at ~3μm) [bottom] and the absence of bright outbursts or young eruptions in K band (at ~2 μm) [top].
CREDIT: F. Marchis

Bending Io’s light
Marchis and his team used a technique called adaptive optics. It’s a technology that helps smooth out blurs that conventional telescopes see when trying to take pictures through the turbulent atmosphere of Earth.

A telescope, fitted with a distortable mirror, is hooked up to the adaptive optics system. As the light bends in the atmosphere, a sensor measures the distortions with the assistance of a computer, which makes calculations.

The best systems today can make 1,000 calculations per second, Marchis said, and that figure is improving all the time.

As the number of calculations increase, so does the accuracy. It makes the image look sharper. In Marchis’ case, it allowed his team to track the Tvashtar volcano’s eruption in 2006-7 at the same time as the New Horizons spacecraft saw it. (New Horizons is en route to Plutoand will arrive in 2015.)

Io isn’t the only astronomical target that benefits from adaptive optics. The system has also been used to find planets around distant stars, to image cracks on Europa, and to give a more precise look at Jupiter’s atmosphere.

As the resolution improves, Marchis said we’ll one day be able to peer at the moons of exoplanets in search of volcano flares and other large phenomena.

“The thermal eruption of these moons may be so strong that we may be able to see them directly with instruments,” he said.

An explosive mystery
Io’s volcanic processes are poorly understood because we don’t have long-term continual observations of the moon, Marchis said. Even when the Galileo spacecraftorbited Jupiter and its moons between 1995 and 2003, it only had brief spells at Io due to the intense, electronics-baking radiation surrounding the moon.

A long-term observation program of Io could solve a mystery that has been puzzling Marchis’ team. Io has been unusually quiet in the past two years, and astronomers aren’t sure why.

In 13 nights of observation since June 2010, Marchis’ team has observed none of the outburst eruptions that characterized the moon in incidents in 2001 and 2007.

Marchis speculated Io might have a long-term cycle of intense volcanic explosions over several years, but more observations are needed, he said.

He speculated Io’s volcanoes may need time to refill their chambers in between large outbursts, but he added there is no known process that scientists can correlate with Io’s volcanic activity.

Giant telescopes will improve resolution
Marchis’ team used three large telescopes (8 to 10 meters in diameter) to watch over Io during the past eight years: W.M. Keck II and Gemini North at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and Chile’s Very Large Telescope No. 4 (also known as Yepun).

He estimates there are about seven telescopes in the world that can do the same kind of searches today, but there are more telescopes under construction that will make the technology even better.

The main telescope Marchis awaits is the planned $1.3 billion Thirty Meter Telescope. When the giant telescope is ready in 2021, the images it will produce will be just 22 miles (35 kilometers) in resolution — the same resolution as Galileo, Marchis said.

“The point is to mobilize the Io community, because we have been kind of dormant due to the fact there has been no space mission.”

laboratoryequipment:

Image of the Day: Twin Galileo Satellites Are Fueled, Ready for Launch

The twin Galileo satellites are now fully fueled and mated together atop the upper stage that will haul them most of the way up to their final orbit. The launch is now planned for the evening of 12 October, according to the European Space Agency.

Technicians donned protective suits to fill the two satellites’ tanks with hydrazine fuel, used to maintain the satellites’ attitude and orbital position during their planned 12-year lifetime. Rather than carry a significant amount of extra fuel to insert themselves into their planned orbits – like typical telecommunications satellites or Galileo’s US GPS equivalents – the Galileo satellites are transported to medium orbit by the Fregat fourth stage of their Soyuz ST-B launcher.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/10/twin-galileo-satellites-are-fueled-ready-launch