Trace constituents of Europa’s atmosphere
نویسنده
چکیده
منابع مشابه
Europa’s Tenuous Atmosphere and Its Interaction with Europa’s Porous Surface
During my 2006-2007 VSGC fellowship I modeled the O2 atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Europa. By assuming that atmospheric O2 can react with species contained in portions of Europa’s surface, my coauthors and I have been able to reproduce the O2 density variations seen by a previously-unexplained HST observation. This work included further refinements to a regolith model that I published previous t...
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An intense flux of ions and electrons from the jovian magnetosphere both alters and erodes Europa’s surface, producing a tenuous atmosphere. This chapter discusses the physical processes that create and remove the atmosphere, such as ion erosion (sputtering), radiation-induced chemical alteration of the surface (radiolysis), and atmospheric loss processes such as ionization and pickup. Special ...
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Trace element abundances in the sputtered extended atmospheres of the Galilean satellites reflect the surface abundances of these trace elements and can thus serve as signatures of surface processes on these satellites. We have measured sodium and potassium abundances in the extended atmospheres of Europa and Io, and derive sodium-to-potassium ratios of 25 ± 2 and 10 ± 3. The large difference b...
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Results from a three-dimensional ballistic model of Europa’s O2 atmosphere are presented. Hubble Space Telescope (HST) ultraviolet observations show spatially non-uniform O2 airglow from Europa. One explanation for this is that the O2 atmosphere is spatially non-uniform. We show that non-uniform ejection of O2 alone cannot reproduce the required morphology, but that a non-uniform distribution o...
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[1] The Cassini imaging science subsystem observed Europa in eclipse during Cassini’s Jupiter flyby. The disk-resolved observations revealed a spatially nonuniform emission in the wavelength range of 200–1050 nm (clear filters). By building on observations and simulations of Europa’s Na atmosphere and torus we find that electron-excited Na in Europa’s tenuous atmosphere can account for the obse...
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