NASA releases 'remastered' view of Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa

Washington: NASA recently released the image of "remastered" view of Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa.

The mosaic of color images was obtained in the late 1990s by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. This is the first time that NASA has published a version of the scene produced using modern image processing techniques.

This view of Europa stands out as the color view that shows the largest portion of the moon's surface at the highest resolution.

An earlier, lower-resolution version of the view, published in 2001, featured colors that had been strongly enhanced. The new image more closely approximates what the human eye would see. Space imaging enthusiasts have produced their own versions of the view using the publicly available data, but NASA has not previously issued its own rendition using near-natural color.

The image features many long, curving and linear fractures in the moon's bright ice shell. Scientists are eager to learn if the reddish-brown fractures, and other markings spattered across the surface, contain clues about the geological history of Europa and the chemistry of the global ocean that is thought to exist beneath the ice.