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Europa's Lanscape (HR)
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This mosaic shows some of the highest resolution images obtained by the Solid State Imaging (SSI) System on NASA's Galileo spacecraft during its 11th orbit around Jupiter. North is to the top of the image. The Sun illuminates the scene from the left, showing hundreds of ridges that cut across each other, indicating multiple episodes of ridge formation either by volcanic or tectonic activity within the ice. Also visible in the image are numerous isolated mountains or "massifs". The highest of these, located in the upper right corner and lower center of the mosaic, are approx. 500 mt (about 1.640 feet) high. Irregularly shaped areas where the ice surface appears to be lower than the surrounding plains (e.g., in the left-center and lower left corner of the mosaic) may be related to the "chaos" areas of iceberg-like features seen in earlier SSI images of Europa.
The mosaic, centered at 35,4° North Lat. and 86,8° West Long., covers an area of 108 by 90 Km (about 66 x 55 miles).
The smallest distinguishable features in the image are about 68 meters (223 feet) across. These images were obtained on November 6, 1997, when the Galileo spacecraft was approximately 3,250 kilometers (1,983 miles) from Europa.
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