NASA has released an enhanced photo mosaic of Jupiter's icy moon Europa taken in 1990s and it's stunning.

The montage of color images was captured by NASA's Galileo spacecraft from 1995 and 1998. It's the first time NASA has published a photo of Europa using modern image processing techniques.

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The enhanced image clearly shows the moon's vein-like rivers threading through an otherwise pitted and etched white landscape. It shows the largest portion of the moon's surface at the highest resolution.

The 2001 version of Europa has a lower resolution and more saturated colors.

On the other hand, the latest version was assembled using the most realistic colors. The image shows a lot of long, curving and linear fractures on the moon's bright ice shell.

To display the moon's massive size, every pixel of the full-resolution version represents two miles. The patterns in the image are from the icy crust breaking and then icing over again.

 Scientists believe the blue color variations are different ice grain sizes in relation to the white portions.

Meanwhile, brown and red thread areas are spots where the ice has other non-ice components in concentrated amounts.

Scientists are keen on discovering if the reddish-brown fractures, and other markings sprinkled across the surface give clues about the geological history of Europa and the chemistry of the global ocean believed to exist beneath the ice.

TagsJupiter's icy moon Europa, Europa Moon, Jupiter, jupiter moon photo, space exploration