I’m a day late (sorry!) but here’s this week’s image for the Where In The Universe Challenge, to test your visual knowledge of the cosmos. You know what to do: 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.
UPDATE: The answer has now been posted below.
This is a dust devil on Mars, captured by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The white mass is a swirling vortex of dust, and the darker line is a shadow cast by this swirling column of dust. This image is from some of the newest releases by HiRISE, see them all here. Find out more about this particular image here.
Check back next week for another WITU challenge!
Placed this image in our StarSpace site today… rest of the latest HiRISE images are wonderful too.
Mars, shot by the HiRISE camera aboard the MRO. The white stuff is a dust devil.
I second this estimate. To elaborate on this there is a white dust on the surface and what appears to be a dark trail towards the top of the picture. The dust devil appears to be picking up frost on the martian surface.
LC
The Face on Mars, in winter.
;-D
Mars, possibly a dust devil track; no clue as to the spacecraft/instrument that obtained the image.
Mars
First thought I came up with was a dust devil on Mars. The “track” appears to be a shadow, however. And yes, I’m going with the high-resolution camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, too.
Careful, this could be ‘magnetic tornado’ imaged by HiRise, but classified due to its ‘shocking nature’ 🙂
Close up of a Mars rock. Looks like there are “blue berries” in the picture. One of the Mars rovers.
Dust Devil, Mars, MRO
A minor mountain in or near the Melas Chasma region on Mars. Image by HiRise.
Face on Mars
Mars
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
Image by HiRise.
surface of MARS. the white region is a part of the ice on the top surface of Mars.
This telescopic view from orbit around Mars catches a Martian dust devil in action in the planet’s southern hemisphere. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Dust Devils of Mars
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
HiRISE
University of Arizona
Gotta be Mars or Earth. I’ll go with Mars. Assuming it’s not a false color image it definitely looks like frost. I didn’t have a clue about the “shadow” on the left, but a dust devil makes good sense. The “frost” seems to extend to the right, perhaps dumped as the dust devil petered out?
Ice on mars
Considering that the dunes are lit from a source located upper left.. it seems the dustdevil shadow is thrown to the lower right.. therefore, I surmise the darker track in the upper left is the track of the dustdevil, where it has scoured the lighter-coloured dust from the darker underlying surface. 🙂