Surface composition and properties of Ganymede: Updates from ground-based observations with the near-infrared imaging spectrometer SINFONI/VLT/ESO

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution near-infrared spectroscopy to analyze Ganymede's surface composition, revealing dominant crystalline water ice, a darkening agent, and salts, with spatial patterns influenced by magnetospheric interactions and endogenous processes.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive global analysis of Ganymede's surface composition using spectral modeling and ground-based observations, highlighting the distribution of key constituents and their relation to surface features.

Findings

Ganymede's surface is dominated by crystalline H2O-ice and a darkening agent.

Latitudinal and hemispherical patterns show darkening at the equator and high latitudes.

Salt distribution suggests endogenous processes rather than magnetospheric effects.

Abstract

Ganymede's surface exhibits great geological diversity, with old dark terrains, expressed through the surface composition, which is known to be dominated by two constituents: H2O-ice and an unidentified darkening agent. In this paper, new investigations of the composition of Ganymede's surface at global scale are presented. The analyses are derived from the linear spectral modeling of a high spectral resolution dataset, acquired with the near-infrared ground-based integral field spectrometer SINFONI of the VLT. We find that the Oren-Nayar (1994) model, generalizing the Lambert's law for rough surfaces, produces excellent photometric corrections. Modeling confirms that Ganymede's surface composition is dominated by H2O-ice, mostly crystalline, as well as a darkening agent, but it also highlights the necessity of secondary species to better fit the measurements: sulfuric acid hydrate and salts. A latitudinal gradient and a hemispherical dichotomy are the strongest spatial patterns observed for the darkening agent, the H2O-ice, and the sulfuric acid: the darkening agent is the major compound at the equator and mid-latitudes, especially on the trailing hemisphere, while the H2O-ice and the sulfuric acid are mostly located at high latitudes and on the leading hemisphere. This anti-correlation is likely a consequence of the bombardment of the constituents in the Jovian magnetosphere which are more intense at higher latitudes. Furthermore, the modeling confirms that polar caps are enriched in small, fresh, H2O-ice grains while equatorial regions are composed of larger grains. Finally, the spatial distribution of the salts is neither related to the Jovian magnetospheric bombardment nor the craters. These species are mostly detected on bright grooved terrains surrounding darker areas. Endogenous processes, such as freezing of upwelling fluids in the ice shell, may explain this distribution.