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File:PIA19048 realistic color Europa mosaic edited.jpg

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Original file (3,680 × 2,720 pixels, file size: 7.41 MB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Summary

This is a retouched picture, which means that it has been digitally altered from its original version. Modifications: Increased linear pixel dimensions (scaled up) by a factor of 1.6 (to bring out fine detail), sharpening. The original can be viewed here: PIA19048 realistic color Europa mosaic (original).jpg. Modifications made by WolfmanSF.

Description
English:

Uploader's notes: the original NASA TIFF image has been modified by increasing linear pixel dimensions by a factor of 1.6 (to bring out fine detail), sharpening and conversion to JPEG format.

Original caption released with image:
The puzzling, fascinating surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view, made from images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. This is the color view of Europa from Galileo that shows the largest portion of the moon's surface at the highest resolution.

The view was previously released as a mosaic with lower resolution and strongly enhanced color (see PIA02590). To create this new version, the images were assembled into a realistic color view of the surface that approximates how Europa would appear to the human eye.

The scene shows the stunning diversity of Europa's surface geology. Long, linear cracks and ridges crisscross the surface, interrupted by regions of disrupted terrain where the surface ice crust has been broken up and re-frozen into new patterns.

Color variations across the surface are associated with differences in geologic feature type and location. For example, areas that appear blue or white contain relatively pure water ice, while reddish and brownish areas include non-ice components in higher concentrations. The polar regions, visible at the left and right of this view, are noticeably bluer than the more equatorial latitudes, which look more white. This color variation is thought to be due to differences in ice grain size in the two locations.

Images taken through near-infrared, green and violet filters have been combined to produce this view. The images have been corrected for light scattered outside of the image, to provide a color correction that is calibrated by wavelength. Gaps in the images have been filled with simulated color based on the color of nearby surface areas with similar terrain types.

This global color view consists of images acquired by the Galileo Solid-State Imaging (SSI) experiment on the spacecraft's first and fourteenth orbits through the Jupiter system, in 1995 and 1998, respectively. Image scale is 2 miles (1.6 kilometers) per pixel. North on Europa is at right.

The Galileo mission was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

Additional information about Galileo and its discoveries is available on the Galileo mission home page at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/galileo/. More information about Europa is available at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/europa.
Date
Source http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19048
Also described here: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-406
Author NASA / Jet Propulsion Lab-Caltech / SETI Institute
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Licensing

Public domain This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)
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Captions

Mosaic of Jupiter's moon Europa, showing the surface geology in realistic color.

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depicts

21 November 2014

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File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current06:19, 27 October 2018Thumbnail for version as of 06:19, 27 October 20183,680 × 2,720 (7.41 MB)WolfmanSFLinear pixel dimensions increased by a factor of 1.6; sharpened
23:34, 10 September 2017Thumbnail for version as of 23:34, 10 September 20172,300 × 1,700 (2.59 MB)WolfmanSFLess compressed version from the original TIFF
06:47, 22 November 2014Thumbnail for version as of 06:47, 22 November 20142,300 × 1,700 (355 KB)WolfmanSFUser created page with UploadWizard

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