Feb 23 1995
From The Space Library
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) found an oxygen atmosphere on Jupiter's second Moon, Europa. This detection was made by a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute, both in Baltimore. They used data provided by HST's Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) instrument from observations taken on June 2, 1994. Europa's atmosphere is only one hundred billionth that of Earth. Europa, about the size of Earth's Moon, has an unusually smooth surface of solid water ice. The oxygen on Europa, whose surface temperature is -230 degrees Fahrenheit, is formed from purely non-biological processes. Water vapor and the gases oxygen and hydrogen are formed by the combination of sunlight and the bombardment of the dust and charged particles trapped in Jupiter's intense magnetic field. (NASA Release 95-17; C Trib, Feb 23/95)
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