Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Where In The Universe #59

Here’s this week’s image for the WITU Challenge, to test your visual knowledge of the cosmos. You know the drill: take a look at this image and see if you can determine where in the universe this image is from; give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the image. 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.

If you missed the answer to last week’s WITU Challenge, find it here.

Look back at all previous 58 Where In the Universe Challenges.

UPDATE: The answer has now been posted below.

This is a false-color image of our own Moon, and specificially of Mare Tranquilitatis (Sea of Tranquility) and Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity, or Sea of Peacefullness). As hal9000 so presciently said in the comments (hal, are you becoming sentient?) this image was taken Galileo spacecraft on December 8, 1992, during Galileo’s second Earth/Moon flyby on its way to Jupiter. Here’s a larger version of this image.

Of course, the Sea of Tranquility is well known as being the landing site of Apollo 11 (40th anniversary this year, in case you haven’t heard!) and the Sea of Serenity is the landing site for both Luna 21 and Apollo 17.

Check back next week for another WITU Challenge!

16 Replies to “Where In The Universe #59”

  3. It’s an image of the Mare Tranquillitatis and Mare Serenitatis on the Moon taken by the Galileo spacecraft on December 8 1992, aken during Galileo’s second Earth/Moon flyby.

    🙂

  4. It’s either Mercury or the Moon, that’s for sure.

    I’m betting on the Moon, probably the Indian probe, don’t remember the name.

  6. hal9000 said:

    It’s an image of the Mare Tranquillitatis and Mare Serenitatis on the Moon taken by the Galileo spacecraft on December 8 1992, aken during Galileo’s second Earth/Moon flyby.

    Exactly!

    @Jorge

    The Indian spacecraft orbiting the moon is named Chandrayaan-1,

  9. I am not much on planetary geology, but this image appears to have a maria seen more on the moon than on Mercury. However, closer inspection reveals this apparent maria has a fair number of impact craters, larger than most on the moon. This picture also closely resembles an image taken by the Messenger spacecraft, though with different colorings.

  10. Other than my backyard, I havent the faintest idea. I remember some dolt a while back complaining whats the use of spending money on spacecraft that discover moons that look like giant fruit, or squash or something. Well this looks like a giant fruit, so I’ll say ganymede or io, and guess, since I feel cantankerous today, the spacecraft is Galileo, which would seem appropriate. Hmmm.. maybe it was a canteloup.

  13. Too many small craters to be moon. Looks a lot like Mercury. Could be Callisto. I’ll stab at the Moon. Lord only knows which spacecraft (or telescope).

  15. Ok, it’s false color, but what was the purpose of the false color image? What colors were assigned to what wave lengths?

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