A New UV Spectral Feature on Europa: Confirmation of NaCl in Leading-hemisphere Chaos Terrain
Abstract
Recent visible-wavelength observations of Europa's surface obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) revealed the presence of an absorption feature near 450 nm that appears spatially correlated with leading-hemisphere chaos terrain. This feature was interpreted to reflect the presence of irradiated sodium chloride ultimately sourced from the interior. Here, we use ultraviolet spectra also collected with the HST to detect an additional previously unseen absorption near 230 nm, which spatially correlates with the 450 nm feature and with the same leading-hemisphere chaos terrain. We find that the new ultraviolet feature is also well matched by irradiated sodium chloride at Europa-like conditions. Such confirmation of sodium chloride within geologically young regions has important implications for Europa's subsurface composition.
Additional Information
© 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Received 2021 October 11; revised 2021 November 26; accepted 2021 December 4; published 2022 February 3. Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. These observations are associated with program #15095. This work is also associated with archival program #15789. Support for programs #15095 and #15789 was provided by NASA through grants from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. This work was also supported by grant Number 668346 from the Simons Foundation. S.K.T. is supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation through a 51 Pegasi b postdoctoral fellowship. All of the data presented in this paper were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the Space Telescope Science Institute. The specific observations analyzed can be accessed via 10.17909/t9-5tsd-s772. Facility: HST(STIS). - Software: astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013).Attached Files
Published - Trumbo_2022_Planet._Sci._J._3_27.pdf
Accepted Version - 2201.01333.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 113243
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20220203-316335000
- NASA
- NAS5-26555
- Simons Foundation
- 668346
- Heising-Simons Foundation
- 51 Pegasi b Fellowship
- Created
-
2022-02-04Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2022-02-04Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)