Europa: Minos Linea (detail mgnf) - false colors

False color has been used here to enhance the visibility of certain features in this composite of 3 images of the Minos Linea region on Jupiter's moon Europa taken on 28 June 1996 Universal Time by the Solid State Imaging Camera on NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Triple bands, lineae and mottled terrains appear in brown and reddish hues, indicating the presence of contaminants in the ice. The icy plains, shown here in bluish hues, subdivide into units with different albedos at infrared wavelengths probably because of differences in the grain size of the ice.
The composite was produced using images with effective wavelengths at 989, 757 and 559 nnmts. The spatial resolution in the individual images ranges from 1,6 to 3,3 Km (about 1 to 2 miles) per pixel.
The area covered, centered at 45° North and 221° West, is about 1.260 Km (approx. 780 miles) across.