Ready for the final Where In The Universe Challenge of 2010? 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, telescope or instrument responsible for the image. We provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until later. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. And 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 2003 image from the Hubble Advanced Camera for Survey provided a unique view of the dust disk around a young, 5-million-year-old star. The star, called HD 141569A, lies 320 light-years away in the constellation Libra and appears to be a member of a triple-star system. This false color, coronagraphic view portrays the system if astronomers could view it from above. See more about this image at the HubbleSite.
Happpy New Year!
Toilet sink in IR.
I suppose it could be a planet, with the central star blocked out. I don’t recognize the image though.
HD 141569A circumstellar disk – taken by ACS/HRC on HST. Missin’ ya already, HRC. 🙁
Coronagraphic image of the protoplanetary disk around HD141569
aha! at last!
damn! ls pipped me!
It’s a picture of the Supermassive Black Finger at the center of our galaxy. How rude!
The trippy scene from 2001 Space Odyssey.
Black hole, center of Milky Way
infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope
It looks like a star whose lights been blocked off in order to view an extrasolar planet. I ain’t gotta clue which though….
False light image of a dust disk around star HD141569. Originally taken by Hubble.