images

Icy plain and faults on jovian moon Europa

by

Nasa/JPL/Novapix

Reference

a-jup05-00312

Date

2006-10-02

False color has been used here to enhance the visibility of certain features in this composite of three images of the Minos Linea region on Jupiter's moon Europa taken on 28 June 1996 Universal Time by the solid state imaging camera on NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Triple bands, lineae and mottled terrains appear in brownand reddish hues, indicating the presence of contaminants in the ice. The icy plains, shown here in bluish hues, subdivide into units with different albedos at infrared wavelengths probably because of differences in the grain size of the ice. The area covered, centered at 45N, 221 W, is about 1,260 km (about 780 miles) across.