NASA presented an updated image of Europe, the satellite of Jupiter

Here is the updated image of Europe (NASA, full-size version )

Europe is the satellite of Jupiter, the planet of the gas giant. Europe has long attracted the attention of scientists and science fiction writers, in particular the fact that the satellite’s surface is covered with many kilometers of water ice. Most likely, scientists believe, under the ice - the ocean, and it can be warm for various reasons.

Well, the liquid water that exists on the satellite for many millions of years is a potentially habitable environment. What is hiding there, under a layer of ice, no one knows, but many are eager to find out. Now experts are creating projects of missions to Europe, missions that could give us more information about this object. But while there is no new information about Europe, including images, we have to be content with what we have.
')
And recently, NASA presented a new version of the famous image of Europe, from photos taken by Galileo back in the 95th and 98th years of the last century. But they made a whole out of these photos with the help of modern image processing methods.

The original image was made up of individual photos with a lower resolution and a strongly modified color gamut (you can see here ).


This is how the first version of the image, presented in 2001, looked like.

A new image looks like what the surface of Europe would look like if a person looked at it, i.e. color rendition - realistic.

The results of photo processing are impressive - now you can see how heterogeneous the surface of Europe is, how many radial cracks and splits on its surface. Images are captured using near infrared, green and violet filters. Then the colors were adjusted, taking into account the real wavelengths. The “white spots” in the photograph were filled by fitting the intended appearance of these gaps, when compared with the neighboring areas.