Jupiter and Its Icy Moon Europa

Two new photos, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, show Jupiter with its turbulent atmosphere and giant storms. One of the images also features Europa, one of Jupiter’s Galilean moons.

A bright, white, stretched-out storm moving at 560 km per hour (348 mph) appeared at Jupiter’s mid-northern latitudes on August 18, 2020.

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Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / M.H. Wong, University of California, Berkeley / OPAL Team.

This image of Jupiter was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on August 25, 2020, when the planet was 653 million km (406 million miles) from Earth.

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Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / M.H. Wong, University of California, Berkeley / OPAL Team.

A new storm at upper left, which erupted on August 18, 2020, is grabbing the attention of scientists in this multiwavelength view. The ‘clumps’ trailing the white plume appear to be absorbing ultraviolet light, similar to the center of the Great Red Spot, and Red Spot Jr. directly below it.

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Searching for Life on Jupiter’s Moon Europa

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took direct ultraviolet images of the icy moon Europa transiting across the disk of Jupiter.

Out of ten observations, Hubble saw what may be water vapor plumes on three of the images. This adds another piece of supporting evidence to the existence of water vapor plumes on Europa - Hubble also detected spectroscopic signatures of water vapor in 2012.

The existence of water vapor plumes could provide a future Europa flyby mission the opportunity to study the conditions and habitability of Europa's subsurface ocean.