Chaotic, swirling terrain on Europa.
Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Published: January 7, 2019

Dark, irregular features on Jupiter's moon Europa.


Original Caption - March 26, 1998

This image of Europa's southern hemisphere was obtained by the solid state imaging (CCD) system on board NASA's Galileo spacecraft during its sixth orbit of Jupiter.

The upper left portion of the image shows the southern extent of the "wedges" region, an area that has undergone extensive disruption. South of the wedges, the eastern extent of Agenor Linea (nearly 1,000 kilometers in length) is also visible.

Thera and Thrace Macula are the dark irregular features southeast of Agenor Linea.

North is to the top of the picture and the sun illuminates the surface from the right. The image, centered at -40 latitude and 180 longitude, covers an area approximately 675 by 675 kilometers.

The finest details that can be discerned in this picture are about 3.3 kilometers across. The images were taken on Feb 20, 1997 at 12 hours, 55 minutes, 34 seconds Universal Time when the spacecraft was at a range of 81,707 kilometers.

ENLARGE