View
of a small region of the thin, disrupted, ice crust in the Conamara region
of Jupiter's moon Europa showing the interplay of surface colour with ice
structures. The white and blue colours outline areas that have been blanketed
by a fine dust of ice particles ejected at the time of formation of the
large (26 km in diameter) crater Pwyll some 1000 km to the south. A few
small craters of less than 500m in diameter can be seen associated with
these regions. These were probably formed, at the same time as the blanketing
occured, by large, intact, blocks of ice thrown up in the impact explosion
that formed Pwyll. The unblanketed surface has a reddish brown color that
has been painted by mineral contaminents carried and spread by water vapor
released from below the crust when it was disrupted. The original color
of the icy surface was probably a deep blue colour seen in large areas elsewhere
on the moon. The colours in this picture have been enhanced for visibility. |
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North
is to the top of the picture and the sun illuminates the surface from the
right. The image, centered at 9 degrees north latitude and 274 degrees west
longitude, covers an area approximately 70 by 30 km, and combines data taken
by the Solid State Imaging (CCD) system on NASA's Galileo spacecraft during
three of its orbits through the Jovian system. Low resolution colour (violet,
green, and infrared) data acquired in September 1996, were combined with
medium resolution images from December 1996, to produce synthetic colour
images. These were then combined with a high resolution mosaic of images
acquired on February 20th, 1997 at a resolution of 54m per picture element
and at a range of 5340 km. |
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