The images show the moons' compositions and geological features and will support upcoming space missions.
, record the amount of sunlight reflected from the moons' icy surfaces. This observation produces what astronomers call a reflectance spectrum, which they can then analyze via a process called spectroscopy to reveal the chemical"fingerprints" of specific elements. These reflectance spectra allowed the scientists to determine the chemical composition of both Jovian moons.
"We mapped the distributions of the different materials on the surface, including sulfuric acid frost, which is mainly found on the side of Europa that is most heavily bombarded by the gasses surrounding Jupiter," team leader and University of Leicester School of Physics and Astronomy Ph.D. student Oliver King, said in a statement.
Seen as blue-colored areas in the VLT image, the icy regions of Ganymede include its polar ice caps and craters where asteroid impacts have freshly exposed the ice that makes up the Galilean moon's crust. King and his colleagues also used the images to map the size of ice grains across Ganymede's surface and determine how different salts may be distributed over it.
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