Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

This Week’s Where In The Universe Challenge



It’s time once again for another Where In The Universe Challenge. Test your visual knowledge of the cosmos by naming where in the Universe this image was taken and give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for this picture. Post your guesses in the comments section, and check back on Thursday at this same post to find the answer. To make this challenge fun for everyone, please don’t include links or extensive explanations with your answer. Good luck!

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

It was fun to have an image (finally!) where not everyone was completely and absolutely sure on the answer. So, what is it? This is Mars, taken by HiRISE and is layered deposits in the north polar region. HiRISE has been looking at the polar regions to monitor seasonal processes and the permanent polar cap, looking for clues to the past climate record recorded in the polar layered deposits.

To find out more about this image check out this HiRise page, and check here for other images about climate change on Mars.

And check back next week for another Where In The Universe Challenge!

32 Replies to “This Week’s Where In The Universe Challenge”

  7. This is Mars, an area of layered deposits in (I think) the North polar area. Could also be in the south, but I think it’s up north.

    The spacecraft responsible for the picture is the MRO, and the camera is the wonderful HiRISE instrument. 🙂

  10. I was thinking the cracks on Europe by Galileo or the Tiger Stripes on Enceladus by Cassini.

  11. It’s got the “trademark look” of a HIRISE image.
    It seems to show tilted and eroded layered deposits.
    There are 1195 HIRISE images showing layered deposits. I’m not going to search them all.
    Going by pictures I saw, I’ll hazard and educated guess: South Polar region… North seems to look different.
    I’m prepared to stand corrected…

  12. HiRISE – layered structures at the poles caused by annual deposition of dust, water ice, frozen carbon dioxide.

    Initial reaction was just like Navneeth – an early (Voyager?) close-up of Saturn’s rings.

  13. I think its Mars false-color image of the north polar layered ice deposits. HiRISE image

  16. This does look like the layered deposits on the martian caps. That is what it may be. However, we might be in for a surprise, for it could turn out to be a close up of a moth wing or something like that as well.

  17. Mars is probably right, but it looks a lot like a closeup of the grooves on an old vinyl recording.

  24. @solrey: I think I can write the word blockquote and have it displayed …

    If so, then you need to enclose this word between a pair of ‘is less than’ and a ‘is greater than’ signs/symbols, with the backslash character preceeding the word in the second instance …

  25. Yep … what messed my earlier, elsewhere, comment up was having the pair of symbols with a backslash … apparently what is between them is treated as something special …

    Let’s try …
    is less than:

  26. well, that proves that the backslash isn’t needed, and also that the symbol pair can be on different lines …

    What if I reverse the order?
    >
    and on a different line
    <

  27. Okey dokey, so this *should* work …

    here you do quotes by
    >blockquote<
    at the beginning, and … (see next comment)

  29. Thanks for taking the time to help, nereid. I appreciate that. I just found the correct HTML code for wordpress and when I came back to try it out, you had already commented. You’re quick. LOL

  31. YAY! Success.

    Repeat experiment to verify results.

    Can I get italics using the cite code?

    Or maybe bold

  32. That’s more like it.

    quotes in italics and bold text. Could get messy trying to proof-read though

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