Jupiter's enigmatic moon, Europa

Jupiter's enigmatic moon, Europa
Jupiter's enigmatic moon, Europa
The enigmatic and captivating surface of Jupiter's icy moon, Europa, is showcased in this newly processed colour view, created from images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. The mosaic reveals the remarkable diversity of Europa's surface geology, with long, linear cracks and ridges crisscrossing the moon's surface. These are interrupted by areas of rifted terrain, where the icy crust has fractured up and refrozen into new patterns. Areas that appear blue or white contain relatively pure water ice, while reddish and brownish areas contain higher concentrations of non-ice materials. The image scale is 1.6 kilometres per pixel, and Europa is almost exactly the same size as the Earth's moon. North is to the right.
Credit:

NASA/JPL-Caltech

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