19 May 2016

The surface of Europa


Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day, from NASA:
An enhanced-color view, this image covers a 350 by 750 kilometer swath across the surface of Jupiter's tantalizing moon Europa. The close-up combines high-resolution image data with lower resolution color data from observations made in 1998 by the Galileo spacecraft. Smooth ice plains, long fractures, and jumbled blocks of chaos terrain are thought to hide a deep ocean of salty liquid water beneath.

2 comments:

  1. Pictures like these always make fore a nice example of the convex/concave optical illusion. I'm guessing those cracks are lower than the surface (seeing that it's water ice), but the light direction makes them seem to lie on top of it - compare what happens if you rotate the image.

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