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Crispy image of Jupiter shows its epic storms and icy moon Europa

Jupiter is not only our solar system’s most visually striking planet, it is also surrounded by a large number of moons — one of which is a promising location to search for life. Europa, one of the closest and largest of Jupiter’s 79 moons, has an icy crust which experts think could be hiding an ocean where life could potentially flourish.

Now, a new image from the Hubble Space Telescope captures both Jupiter and Europa in delightfully sharp detail.

Hubble’s Crisp New Image of Jupiter and Europa
This latest image of Jupiter, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on 25 August 2020, was captured when the planet was 653 million kilometers from Earth. Hubble’s sharp view is giving researchers an updated weather report on the monster planet’s turbulent atmosphere, including a remarkable new storm brewing, and a cousin of the Great Red Spot changing color — again. The new image also features Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), and M. H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL team.

Jupiter is full of surprises, and this image shows how the weather on the planet is changing — especially in the Great Red Spot, the large circular structure shown in orange which is a superstorm stretching nearly 10,000 miles across. That means this spot is so large it could swallow the Earth in its entirety.

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This huge spot isn’t static though — it has actually been shrinking since early observations in the 1930s, but that shrinking seems to have slowed down and astronomers aren’t sure why. Another open question is why the spot is the color it is, in the attention-grabbing bright orange, as most storms on Jupiter appear white or brown. And its color changes over time as well, with this image showing it a more rich reddish color than it has been previously.

As for Europa, you can see it to the left of Jupiter. Hubble has previously observed water vapor being ejected from the moon’s surface which could be linked to liquid water beneath the icy crust. But it’s hard to know for sure what these plumes of water mean until we can study it up close. For that purpose, the European Space Agency is launching a mission to Jupiter’s moons in 2022, called JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer), which will explore Europa as well as its sibling moons Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, to learn more about the ocean that could be hiding beneath the ice.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
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Jupiter’s moon Europa was captured by the JunoCam instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during the mission’s close flyby on Sept. 29, 2022. The images show the fractures, ridges, and bands that crisscross the moon’s surface.

This image of Jupiter’s moon Europa was captured by the JunoCam instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during the mission’s close flyby on September 29, 2022. The image shows the fractures, ridges, and bands that crisscross the moon’s surface. Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS. Image processing: Björn Jónsson (CC BY 3.0)

NASA's Juno mission is busy studying not only the planet of Jupiter, with its strange weather and strong magnetic field, but also several of its icy moons ,including the intriguing Europa. Often a top target of habitability research, Europa is exciting as a potential host for life because it is thought to have a liquid water ocean -- although this ocean is beneath an icy crust up to 15 miles thick. Juno has taken high-definition photos of Europa's surface, and scientists have recently analyzed this data to identify fractures and other features running across the icy shell.

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This view of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa was captured by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during the mission’s close flyby on Sept. 29, 2022.

When scientists look out into the solar system for places other than Earth that might be capable of hosting life, one of the leading locations of interest is Jupiter's moon Europa. Even though it is far from the sun and it appears on the surface to be icy and inhospitable, it has a liquid water ocean located beneath a thick icy crust, which could potentially allow for life to survive there. However, new research pours some cold water on this possibility, as it seems that the moon produces less oxygen than previously thought.

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