"For the study, Mc Keown's team compared Damhán Alla, which is roughly a kilometer across, with similar formations on Earth called lake stars, sometimes called ice stars. Typically a few feet in size, lake stars form when snow falls on the surface of a frozen lake and holes form in the ice, letting water melt away some of the snow in radial, branching patterns."
""The significance of our research is really exciting," lead author Lauren Mc Keown, a physicist at the University of Central Florida, said in a statement. "Surface features like these can tell us a lot about what's happening beneath the ice. If we see more of them with Europa Clipper" - NASA's new space probe currently en route to Jupiter - they could point to local brine pools below the surface."
Planetary scientists from Ireland identified a spider-shaped surface feature on Jupiter's moon Europa and named it Damhán Alla. The formation may result from torrents of water erupting through Europa's icy shell, leaving dendritic, radial scars. Such features could indicate localized brine pools beneath the ice and active exchange between surface and subsurface. Europa is believed to host a global saltwater ocean under its ice, making these surface signs important for assessing habitability. Damhán Alla spans roughly a kilometer and resembles terrestrial lake stars, which form when meltwater creates radial branching patterns through snow and ice.
Read at Futurism
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