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A Stable H₂O Atmosphere on Europa's Trailing Hemisphere From HST Images

Roth, Lorenz

Previous studies of the global intensities of the oxygen emissions at 1,356 Å and 1,304 Å revealed molecular oxygen (O₂) in Europa's atmosphere. Here we investigate the relative changes of the two oxygen emissions when Europa emerges from eclipse as well as the radial profiles of the relative emissions across the sunlit disk in Hubble S…

Evolution of the Horizontal Winds in Jupiter's Great Red Spot From One Jovian Year of HST/WFC3 Maps

de Pater, Imke; Wong, Michael H.; Simon, Amy A. +3 more

We measured the horizontal winds in Jupiter's Great Red Spot (GRS) using data from the WFC3/UVIS instrument on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The data cover 11 epochs from 2009 to 2020. Long-term monotonic trends in size and shape previously noted from the visible cloud appearance are paralleled by changes in the high-speed ring around th…

Ultralow Frequency Waves in Driving Jovian Aurorae Revealed by Observations From HST and Juno

Grodent, Denis; Bonfond, Bertrand; Wei, Yong +6 more

Large scale electrical currents and Alfvénic waves are the two main drivers responsible for producing planetary aurorae. The relative contribution of each process is a central question in terrestrial auroral science, and poorly understood for other planets due to the relatively rare opportunity of in situ spacecraft measurements. Here, we present …

Jupiter's Double-Arc Aurora as a Signature of Magnetic Reconnection: Simultaneous Observations From HST and Juno

Wei, Y.; Bonfond, B.; Vogt, M. F. +10 more

Jupiter's powerful auroral emission is usually divided into the polar, main, and equatorward components. The driver of Jupiter's main aurora is a central question for the community. Previous investigations reveal many distinct substructures on the main auroral oval, which are indicators of fundamentally different magnetospheric processes. Understa…

Interaction of Saturn's Hexagon With Convective Storms

Hueso, R.; Sánchez-Lavega, A.; Barry, T. +8 more

In March 2020, a convective storm erupted at planetographic latitude 76°N in the southern flank of Saturn's long lived hexagonal wave. The storm reached a zonal size of 4,500 km and developed a tail extending zonally 33,000 km. Two new short lived storms erupted in May in the hexagon edge. These storms formed after the convective storms that took …