Surface Composition of Europa's Icy Bright Plains and Dark Linea: Leading side versus trailing side comparisons

Details Surface Composition of Europa's Icy Bright Plains and Dark Linea: Leading side versus trailing side comparisons Surface Composition of Europa's Icy Bright Plains and Dark Linea: Leading side versus trailing side comparisons

Oct 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011epsc.conf.1201s&link_type=abstract

EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2011, held 2-7 October 2011 in Nantes, France. http://meetings.copernicus.org/epsc-dps2011, p.1201

Computer Science

Scientific paper

We compare linear mixture modeling solutions yielding surface composition and water ice grain size information for three widely-spaced locations on Europa. Low-noise Galileo Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) observations are employed for this analysis. Model solutions indicate that the surface compositions for locations on the orbital leading hemisphere are dominated by fine-grained water ice. Ice abundance ranges from 65%-82% with grain sizes ranging from ~50-μm to ~75-μm. These locations exhibit extremely low abundances of hydrated sulfuric acid and minor amounts of hydrated salts. A location on the orbital trailing side is characterized by a high abundance (>40%) of hydrated sulfuric acid, with lesser amounts of hydrated salts. Large-grained (100-μm to ~250-μm) water ice is present in this trailing hemisphere location. Higher abundances of hydrated salts and distinctive water ice grain size distributions are seen in association with dark materials in all three locations. Our results help distinguish between exogenic and endogenic influences on Europa's present-day surface composition.

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