Scientists find oxygen on Jupiter moon

17 Jun 2002

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence for a thin oxygen atmosphere on Jupiter's moon Ganymede, the largest of the Jovian satellites. The same team of scientists had previously found a tenuous veil of oxygen around another Jupiter moon, Europa. The observations also suggest that Ganymede, like Earth and Jupiter itself, has polar aurorae -- light displays created when charged particles collide with atmospheric gases.

"The bright spikes correspond nicely to the poles of Ganymede," said Doyle Hall, the Johns Hopkins University astronomer who led the team making the oxygen discovery. Hall called the data "very tentative evidence for the existence of polar aurorae." The findings were presented this week as a poster paper at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Tucson, Arizona.