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Bright-Dark Terrain Boundary, Ganymede

Dec. 16, 2000
The ancient, dark terrain of Nicholson Regio shows many large impact craters, and zones of fractures oriented generally parallel to the boundary between the dark and bright regions of Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Image taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft.

The ancient, dark terrain of Nicholson Regio (left) shows many large impact craters, and zones of fractures oriented generally parallel to the boundary between the dark and bright regions of Jupiter's moon Ganymede. In contrast, the bright terrain of Harpagia Sulcus (right) is less cratered and relatively smooth.

The nature of the boundary between ancient, dark terrain and younger, bright terrain, the two principal terrain types on Ganymede, was explored by NASA's Galileo spacecraft on May 20, 2000. Subtle parallel ridges and grooves show that Harpagia Sulcus's land has been smoothed out over the years by tectonic processes.

North is to the top of the picture. The Sun illuminates the surface from the left. The image, centered at ?14 degrees latitude and 319 degrees longitude, covers an area approximately 213 by 97 kilometers (132 by 60 miles.) The resolution is 121 meters (about 250 feet) per picture element. The images were taken on May 20, 2000, at a range of 11,800 kilometers (about 7,300 miles).

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the Galileo mission home page at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo

This image was produced by DLR (German Aerospace Center), Berlin,http://solarsystem.dlr.de/.

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