This image was taken near the closest approach point, and is the highest resolution image of Europa that will be obtained by Galileo. The image was taken at a highly oblique angle, providing a vantage point similar to looking out of an airplane window, with the features at the bottom of the image being much closer to the viewer than those at the top of the image. Many bright ridges are seen in the image, with dark material in the low-lying valleys. In the center of the image, the regular ridges and valleys give way to a darker region of jumbled hills, which may be one of the many dark pits observed on the surface of Europa. Smaller dark circular features seen here are probably impact craters.
North is to the right of the picture, and the sun illuminates the surface from that direction.
This image shows an area of crustal separation on Europa. Lower resolution images earlier in the Galileo spacecraft's tour revealed that dark wedge-shaped bands in this region are areas at which the icy crust has completely pulled apart, with dark material filling in the void created by this separation. This dark material has welled up from below. In the lower left of this image, a portion of one of the dark wedge areas is visible, revealing a linear texture along the trend of the wedge. The two orientations visible in this image reflect the fact that we are looking at a dog-leg in the wedge, where it changes orientation slightly.