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Hubble observations of Ganymede, Teleconference on March 12, 2015
JRehling
post Mar 10 2015, 06:13 AM
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http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/march/nasa-...n/#.VP6JwEJBDjI

This seems to hint at something momentous. Ganymede hasn't been breaking news very often since the Galileo mission ended, so what's the announcement?

I would think that HST observations of Ganymede could only be worthy of a teleconference if it's one of these:

1) The existence of plumes/geysers as were observed at Europa.
2) Something interesting detected in Ganymede's very-thin atmosphere.
3) Something interesting deposited in the ices on the surface.

One of the speakers, Joachim Saur, has had publications regarding Ganymede's surface, aurorae at Io, Enceladus, and was on the paper announcing plumes at Europa.

Maybe we've got another Galilean with a buried ocean that sprays its contents skyward?
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TheAnt
post Mar 13 2015, 09:45 AM
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The presence of the magnetic field in itself had been seen as one indication of a subsurface layer of salty water. And that's what it is required for it to be electrically conductive to create the field in the first place.

So the detection of aurora is more an indication of how the magnetic field interacts with the environment there.
What bugs me is that illustrations show the aurora as blue. No nitrogen have been detected in the very thin atmosphere of Ganymede.
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