Pwyll Crater on Europa
Pwyll crater on Jupiter's moon, Europa, was photographed by the Solid State Imaging system on the Galileo spacecraft during its sixth orbit around Jupiter. This impact crater is located at 26 degrees south latitude, 271 degrees west longitude, and is about 26 kilometers (16 miles) in diameter. Lower resolution pictures of Pwyll Crater taken earlier in the mission show that material ejected by the impact can be traced for hundreds of miles across the icy surface of Europa. The dark zone seen here in and around the crater is material excavated from several kilometers (a few miles) below the surface. Also visible in this picture are complex ridges.
The two images comprising this mosaic were taken on February 20, 1997 from a distance of 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) by the Galileo spacecraft. The area shown is about 120 kilometers by 100 kilometers (75 miles by 60 miles).
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington D.C. This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web Galileo mission home page at http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov.