Flannery O\'Connor\'s \'Revelation\'

4 Pages 879 Words

In 1610, Marius Galileo discovered four of Jupiter’s sixteen moons. These four satellites became known as Galileans. Among these four moons was Europa. Europa is the smallest of the Galileans; it is a bit smaller than our moon. Europa also has the most reflective surface of all the objects in our solar system. Europa is one of the most interesting objects in our solar system.1
Voyager 1 was the first mission to explore Europa. Before this mission, Europa was thought to be very similar to Jupiter’s other moon Io. After Voyager 1 sent back information, scientists could tell it was nothing at all like Io. Photographs were taken from 732,230 km away. The pictures are poor in resolution but showed many new things scientists did not know about the satellite.2
Europa is located about 670,900 km away from Jupiter. It is 3,126 km in diameter.3 Europa is mostly white in color and does not appear to have any volcanoes on the surface. Also, very few craters have been found. Europa’s surface has sometimes been compared to a billiard ball because it is so smooth compared to the other satellites.4 Because Voyager 1 was not able to have a close flyby of Europa, details were hard to get from the pictures. The best Voyager images showed lines of dark ridges all over the satellite’s surface.5
Voyager 2 got closer to Europa at about 204,030 km away. Photographs taken during this mission revealed dark regions and also lighter regions. The main impression from these photographs was a multipart web of bright and dark lines criss-crossing each other.6 Very few craters were seen again, which might suggest that Europa is young compared to the rest of our solar system, or maybe even that it is going through re-surfacing.7 The surface has several long and narrow ridges. The widest width of these ridges measured 10 km while the greatest length measured 100 km. Three Macula spots were found on the surface. Macula spots are dark and sometimes irregular in ...