Carnival of Space 334

The Carnival of Space 334 is up at Urban Astronomer

Universe Today – For the past five years, I’ve been constructing this list of all things astronomical for the coming year, lovingly distilling the events transpiring worldwide down to a 101 “best events of the year”.

A Triple transit of three of Jupiter’s moons on June 3, 2014

Nextbigfuture – Saturn’s moon Titan is covered with large lakes of liquid Methane. Radar analysis finds that there is 300 times as much liquid methane on the surface of Titan as all of the oil on Earth

Nextbigfuture – NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has observed water vapor above the frigid south polar region of Jupiter’s moon Europa, providing the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon’s surface. Previous scientific findings from other sources already point to the existence of an ocean located under Europa’s icy crust. Researchers are not yet fully certain whether the detected water vapor is generated by erupting water plumes on the surface, but they are confident this is the most likely explanation.

The Europa and Enceladus plumes have remarkably similar abundances of water vapor. Because Europa has a roughly 12 times stronger gravitational pull than Enceladus, the minus-40-degree-Fahrenheit (minus-40-degree-Celsius) vapor for the most part doesn’t escape into space as it does at Enceladus, but rather falls back onto the surface after reaching an altitude of 125 miles (201 kilometers), according to the Hubble measurements. This could leave bright surface features near the moon’s south polar region, the researchers hypothesize.

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