The area of Nicholson Regio and Arbela Sulcus illustrates many of the diverse terrain types on Jupiter's moon Ganymede, as seen in this image taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft.
The bright terrain of Arbela Sulcus is the youngest terrain here, slicing north-south across the image. It is finely striated, and relatively lightly cratered. To the east (right) is the oldest terrain in this area, rolling and relatively densely cratered Nicholson Regio. To the west (left) is a region of highly deformed grooved terrain, intermediate in relative age. In this area of grooved terrain, stretching and normal faulting of Nicholson Regio has deformed it beyond recognition.
North is to the top of the picture and the Sun illuminates the surface from the west. The image, centered at -15 degrees latitude and 347degrees longitude, covers an area approximately 89 by 26 kilometers (55by 16 miles). The resolution is 34 meters (112 feet) per picture element. The images were taken on May 20, 2000, at a range of 3,350 kilometers (2,082 miles).
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.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
This image was produced by DLR (German Aerospace Center), Berlin, and Brown University, Providence, R.I., http://solarsystem.dlr.de/ andhttp://www.planetary.brown.edu/.
