APOD: Gibbous Europa (2013 Dec 15)

[Boomer12k]

Somebody been "cutting cookies" in the ice.....

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[Boomer12k]

At 1,900 miles in diameter, it would make an AWESOME COMET....if free to roam the Solar system, like a comet....
Or at least, I imagine it would....

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[Boomer12k]

Are there any thoughts in relation to the square structure below centre in the middle of the picture?

Central Processing Station for OBAMACARE in the Jovian System....

Actually, I think it is an "intersection" or someplace where ice has "bunched up"...an Ice Mound, if you will...

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[BDanielMayfield]

Europa just becomes more and more interesting. I hope we can find a way to explore it.

Ann

JUICE is planning to go there, but not before 2031, (JUICE = JUpiter ICy moons Explorer)

JUICE is the first large-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme. Planned for launch in 2022 and arrival at Jupiter in 2030, it will spend at least three years making detailed observations of the giant gaseous planet Jupiter and three of its largest moons, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.

http://sci.esa.int/juice/
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/mar2012/pr ... ummary.pdf

From the JUICE mission website:

During the tour, gravity assists with Callisto and Ganymede will shape the trajectory. Two targeted Europa flybys are included focusing on composition of the non water-ice material, and the first subsurface sounding of an icy moon. Additional, Callisto gravity assists will be also used to raise the orbit inclination to almost 30° and to enable observations of the Jupiter polar regions. The frequent Callisto flybys will enable unique remote observations of the moon and in situ measurements in its vicinity. The mission will culminate in a dedicated eight months orbital tour around Ganymede during which the spacecraft will perform detailed investigation of the moon and its environment and will eventually impact on Ganymede.

There’s so much to investigate in the Jovian system that this mission is a great step, but with only two Europa flybys and no sample return this mission will leave many open questions re today’s lunar attraction.

Bruce

[TheGuybrarian]

I was a little disappointed to see the same photo of Europa re-used on the APOD blog. It was previously featured on January 30, 2011.

[owlice]

I was a little disappointed to see the same photo of Europa re-used on the APOD blog. It was previously featured on January 30, 2011.

Q4: Have some APOD pictures been run more than once?
A4: Yes. Many of our readers have been with us less than a year and are unaware of some really spectacular or important astronomy pictures. New information about old pictures is becoming available over the WWW. The text and links for rerun pictures will make use of this newly available information. So although the picture might be old, some of the text and links of each APOD will be new. Also, more web surfers have larger bandwidth connections, which allows us to post higher-resolution image files that can be transferred conveniently. Software to handle more sophisticated image file formats has also become more common, so the picture's size and/or format might be new. Lastly, rerunning APODs saves us time and helps us update our archive. In general, our rerun policy currently is to only rerun APODs more than one year old to keep the pictures relatively "new" to new APOD viewers. We will almost never rerun more than two pictures in any given week. So when you load the current APOD,it is still, most probably, a new picture.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap_faq.html