

Jupiter Moon Europa's Giant Geysers Are Missing - benbreen
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jupiter-moon-europa-s-giant-geysers-are-missing

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kristopolous
How is the detection done? Is it some chemical signature? A graphical visual
image? Something else? Could it be that the methodology used may be too
presumptuous on the nature of the phenomena? Could it be that the phenomena is
something else entirely and has been misclassified? What is the methodology of
identification and classification of such phenomena and how is that confidence
expressed?

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32faction
Europa is tidally locked to Jupiter meaning one side of Europa is always
facing Jupiter (like our Moon). It also orbits in a nearly circular orbit
however this is not to be confused with perfectly circular orbit: Europa will
have perizene and apozene points (locations in which Europa is closest and
farthest to Jupiter respectively)

That being said we have made calculations based upon the tidal forces on
Europa by Jupiter and the plumes seem to appear when Europa is at it's apozene
location and disappear at its perizene location.

I don't think it said in the article where Europa is. It could simply be
nearing its perizene and the geysers go away due to the tidal model.

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yoha
I didn't not know we had specific names of apses outside the Sun's and Earth's
ones. I found a list that some might found interesting:

[http://www.orbiter-
forum.com/showthread.php?t=13943#post1477...](http://www.orbiter-
forum.com/showthread.php?t=13943#post147749)

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32faction
Yep! My friend's capstone team was named "Perigalacticon" I thought it was
some SciFi thing but I later learned it meant "closest approach to the center
of the Galaxy"

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IndianAstronaut
What this means is that we will need to plan for a lander on Europa. This will
be very tricky to land due to a lack of atmosphere and the need to avoid
contamination.

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maaku
ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.

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swamp40
These guys are just _no_ fun at all :)

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nickhodge
"Aliens"

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scottcanoni
Whew, thank goodness I didn't blast off in a rocket towards Europa. Though,
maybe I could course correct to Enceladus. That's where the action is at.

