infrared spectrometer tagged posts

Finding prompts a rethinking of the icy moon’s subsurface ocean. Researchers have discovered that the yellow color visible on portions of the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa is actually sodium chloride.

A familiar ingredient has been hiding in plain sight on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa...

The Great Red Spot is the dark patch in the middle of this infrared image. It is dark due to the thick clouds that block thermal radiation. The yellow strip denotes the portion of the Great Red Spot used in astrophysicist Gordon L. Bjoraker’s analysis.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Gordon Bjoraker

One critical question has bedeviled astronomers for generations: Is there water deep in Jupiter’s atmosphere, and if so, how much? Gordon L. Bjoraker, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, reported in a recent paper in the Astronomical Journal that he and his team have brought the Jovian research community closer to the answer.

By looking from ground-based telescopes at wavelengths sensitive to thermal radiation leaking from the depths of Jupi...