München 2019 – scientific programme
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EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik
EP 9: Poster
EP 9.6: Poster
Thursday, March 21, 2019, 16:30–19:00, Durchgangshalle
Monte-Carlo modeling of uncertainties in the detection of plumes on Europa with the Hubble Space Telescope — •Stephan Schlegel1, Joachim Saur1, and Lorenz Roth2 — 1Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology, University of Cologne, Germany — 2Department of Space and Plasma Physics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
The search for liquid water within different planetary bodies in our solar system is an ongoing subject of many scientific works. In our work we revisit the detection of Europa's plume within Hubble Space Telescope observations by Roth et al. 2014 and provide a new assessment of the errors associated with the detection. For this purpose we consider the different error sources that occur while processing or are inherent to the instrument or the physics of the system. To achieve better insight on the statistical behavior of such observations, Monte Carlo tests for different emission models of Europa as seen from the Hubble Space Telescope were carried out. For this purpose models with plumes were compared to models without plume. Additionally by varying different parameters, contributions of different error sources could be separated and the significance of the properties of the plumes could be analyzed in detail. Therefore, atmospheric emissions, contribution of the surface reflectance as well as inaccuracies in target acquisition were investigated. It could be shown that the significant Lyman alpha anomaly which was present in the observations has a rather high signal to noise ratio of 5.4 and can most likely be attributed to plume activity.