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Here’s this week’s Where In The Universe Challenge. 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 telescope or 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.
Although “carpet” was the first thing I thought of when I saw this image, it actually is on Mars, and was taken by the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2008. These are numerous pit craters in polar layered deposits. Pit craters are depressions formed by a sinking of the ground surface lying above a void or empty chamber, (like the lava tubes seen on the Moon recently) rather than by meteor impacts or the eruption of a volcano or lava vent. I’m trying to imagine what this region would look like if you were standing in amongst these pits. The resolution listed on this image is that objects ~96 cm (38 inches) across resolved, so it is quite close up. See a larger version and more info on this image at the HiRISE website.
And check back next week for another WITU challenge!
Polar ice field on Mars by Mars orbiter.
Polar ice field on Mars by MRO.
Strange, all I can think of is a little blond girl saying “They’re here…”
Mars Reconaissance Orbiter HiRISE image.
And, yes, polar field sounds like a good idea.
maybe saturn rigns?
This is the IV Annual World Congress of Hare Krishnas.
That or a polar ice field on Mars, shot by HiRISE.
close up picture of the carpet in my office….and i have to admit i’m a little disturbed by the thought of spy satellite photographing my carpet. i guess spy satellites really are as good as they show in the movies. what else was photographed?
This looks a lot like the MRO HiRISE image of the polar region where the Mars craft crashed in 1999.
LC
Polor ice field MRO. Has anybody noticed the dark streek at the top right corner with something siting in the middle of it? Could it be something we sent to mars, looks unatural?????
Looks a little like solar granularity as well.
Frazer’s new carpet.
No no, it’s Nancy’s carpet.
It’s your living room carpet
a bunch of dead fish at the bayou chaland, or at the Louisiana canal ty BP! 😀
The Sun. Stereo spacecraft.
i reckon its the sun. in fact i feel quite certain…
The sun. Don’t know the telescope.
Looks a like the granules in the photosphere of the sun
Damn! Where’d that “a” come from?
dead fish floating in the Mississippi river?
A great patch of clovers a hundred miles wide…
from “Horton Hears a Who”
CBR as observed on my telly, circa 2003.
looks like a close up of bentonite aka popcorn rock….either that or granules on the surface of the sun
This image shows a cottage cheese-like texture on the surface of part of the summer Martian north polar cap. (Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems)
An old picture of sun’s granulation. But in this case really no idea.
An picture of the sun in closeup.
Probably by the SOHO spacecraft
The Mississippi delta “fish kill”. Photo taken from BP’s orange and white Douglas C47.