Source: NASA/Lunar and Planetary Institute/Paul Schenk
Published: July 9, 2017

This animation showing a flyover of the region named Conamara on Europa was created using stereo imaging data obtained by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Both color and monochrome data, along with images taken by Galileo at different scales, were used to create the video.

The Conamara region is notable for the intriguing blocky and disrupted nature of its surface, dubbed "chaos terrain." The chaos terrain indicates relatively recent activity on Europa's surface, in which irregularly shaped blocks of water ice were formed by the break up and movement of the existing crust. The blocks were shifted, rotated, and even tipped and partially submerged within a mobile material that was either liquid water, warm mobile ice, or an ice and water slush. The presence of young fractures cutting through this region indicates that the surface froze again into solid, brittle ice. Much of the icy surface has a reddish brown color that has been painted by mineral contaminants.

View this video on YouTube.

Additional images and information about Conamara are available from NASA's Planetary Photojournal.

Video provided courtesy of Dr. Paul Schenk.