Where In The Universe #55

Are you ready for another Where In The Universe Challenge? Take a look and see if you can name where in the Universe this image is from. Give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the image. As usual, we’ll provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until tomorrow. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. Please, no links or extensive explanations of what you think this is — give everyone the chance to guess.

UPDATE: The answer has now been posted below. Don’t peek before you make your guess.

What you are seeing here is the dark side of Saturn’s moon Titan, with sunlight filtering through the moon’s hazy atmosphere. And obviously, the Cassini spacecraft is responsible for this image.

An airless satellite would appear in this viewing geometry only as a lit crescent. But Titan’s thick atmosphere scatters light around all edges of the planet to create a ring of light.

This view looks toward the Saturn-facing side of Titan. North on Titan is up and rotated 45 degrees to the left. The images were acquired at a distance of approximately 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 157 degrees. Image scale is 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel.

Nice job, everyone! Check back next week for another WITU challenge!

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/

Share
Published by
Nancy Atkinson

Recent Posts

The First Close-Up Picture of Star Outside the Milky Way

Like a performer preparing for their big finale, a distant star is shedding its outer…

7 hours ago

Here’s What We Know About Earth’s Temporary Mini-Moon

For a little over a month now, the Earth has been joined by a new…

8 hours ago

New Study Suggests Black Holes Get their “Hair” from their Mothers

Despite decades of study, black holes are still one of the most puzzling objects in…

9 hours ago

Gaze at New Pictures of the Sun from Solar Orbiter

74 million kilometres is a huge distance from which to observe something. But 74 million…

9 hours ago

Are Fast Radio Bursts Caused by Interstellar Objects Crashing Into Neutron Stars?

Astronomers have only been aware of fast radio bursts for about two decades. These are…

14 hours ago

Here’s How to Weigh Gigantic Filaments of Dark Matter

How do you weigh one of the largest objects in the entire universe? Very carefully,…

16 hours ago