Flyover video of Jupiter’s Europa
kottke.org
kottke.org
Images of Europa from the Galileo spacecraft reveal a complicated terrain of grooved linear ridges and crustal plates which seem to have broken apart and rafted into new positions. That could indicate subsurface water or slush. In the image above, blue tints represent relatively old ice surfaces while reddish regions may contain material from more recent internal geological activity.
The quote above is specifically referring to an image on the page from which I took the quote:
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1998/a...
But I believe the stills which comprise the video fit the same overall description.
The mission page is https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/galileo/in-depth/
And I think the images can be found at https://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/volumes/galileo.html
It's quite off topic for hacker news but I really encourage people to research nasa and the so called space exploration program.
More seriously though, the linear features on the surface seem highly unusual; I wonder what's the geological explanation for them? EDIT: reading through other comments; apparently it's water freezing in cracks in the ice.
I do not know how far you can take the reconstruction in practice. If you know the source illumination (it's the sun - easy), identify all the materials that are in the images successfully (hard) and know their reflection spectra (possible), you can in theory create realistic color impressions.
blue-white terrains indicate relatively pure water ice, whereas the reddish areas contain water ice mixed with hydrated salts, potentially magnesium sulfate or sulfuric acid.