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Infrared Observations of Europa's Trailing Side

June 17, 1998
During the first targeted encounter of the icy satellite Europa, NASA's Galileo performed high resolution spectral mapping of the trailing side, a region thought to have minerals other than water ice.

During the first targeted encounter of the icy satellite Europa, the Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) performed high resolution spectral mapping of the trailing side, a region thought to have minerals other than water ice. For each pixel of the image, there is a corresponding spectrum of several hundred wavelengths which is used to identify the types of material present. The excellent resolution (about 10 km) of the NIMS data shown on the right allows one to isolate the spectral signatures of the different types of terrain, which seem to consist of water frost and hydrated minerals in various proportions. The NIMS image is shown for a wavelength of 0.7 micrometers; a corresponding Voyager image for visible light is shown on the left.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.

This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov.

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