Jupiter's moon Europa has a subsurface ocean beneath an icy crust. Conditions within the ocean are unknown, and it is unclear whether it is connected to the surface. We observed Europa with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to search for active release of material by probing its surface and atmosphere.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMain-belt comets are small Solar System bodies located in the asteroid belt that repeatedly exhibit comet-like activity (that is, dust comae or tails) during their perihelion passages, strongly indicating ice sublimation. Although the existence of main-belt comets implies the presence of extant water ice in the asteroid belt, no gas has been detected around these objects despite intense scrutiny with the world's largest telescopes. Here we present James Webb Space Telescope observations that clearly show that main-belt comet 238P/Read has a coma of water vapour, but lacks a significant CO gas coma.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhilos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci
December 2020
More than 30 years have passed since the Voyager 2 flybys of Uranus and Neptune. This paper outlines a range of lessons learned from Voyager, broadly grouped into 'process, planning and people.' In terms of process, we must be open to new concepts, whether new instrument technologies, new propulsion systems or operational modes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObservations of Neptune with the Space Telescope yield a 49 day light curve with 98% coverage at a 1 minute cadence. A significant signature in the light curve comes from discrete cloud features. We compare results extracted from the light curve data with contemporaneous disk-resolved imaging of Neptune from the Keck 10-m telescope at 1.
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