Category: Where In the Universe?

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 instrument responsible for the image. We’ll provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until later this week. 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: Answer has been posted below.

This week’s WITU challenge image was a cropped version of an image I took in March 2010 of space shuttle Discovery during a midnight rollout to the launchpad. A unique silhouette shadow formed up in the clouds from the Xenon lights shining of the shuttle stack. The effect only lasted a short time, but I was able to capture it with my Fuji Finepix S2000. Here is the full image, below, which was featured on the popular Astronomy Picture of the Day website this week. I’m usually known for my words and not my pictures, so it was an honor to have an image I took posted on such a well-regarded website.

You can read the full story about how I captured the image on my personal blog, and see more images of the shadow, some of which I think might be better than this one, however the effect is more subtle.

You all made me feel very good that so many of you recognized this week’s WITU as my APOD image!

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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!

Apologies for not posting the answers to the Where In the Universe Challenges numbers 116 and 117! Does forgetting things like this mean I’m overly busy or just getting older? Anyway, you can find the answers back on the original posts: #116 was this image of a ghostly, mysterious galaxy with anomalous arms, and #117 was a beautiful image of a crescent planetary body— but the challenge was naming WHICH body!

It’s time once again for another Where In The Universe Challenge. Name where in the Universe this image was taken and give yourself extra points if you can name the telescope or spacecraft responsible for the image. Post your guesses in the comments section, and check back on later 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.

This is a thin crescent of Saturn’s third largest moon, Dione, taken by the Cassini spacecraft’s narrow-angle camera on May 17, 2010, and just released on Sept. 1. Cassini was about 394,000 kilometers (245,000 miles) from Dione, and the image scale is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel. Just like seeing our own Moon as a crescent allows us to better see the craters along the terminator, the lit terrain seen here highlights the craters on Dione, as well.

See more about this image at the Cassini website.

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.

This is galaxy M106 (a.k.a. NGC 4258) with its two mysterious and ghostly spiral arms. The image is a team effort: the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Spitzer Space Telescope, the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, and older visible data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

M106 is about 23.5 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici. The arms have been a mystery: in visible-light images, two prominent arms spiral outward from the bright nucleus and are dominated by young, bright stars, which light up the gas within the arms. But in radio and X-ray images, two additional spiral arms show up, appearing as ghostly apparitions between the main arms. These so-called “anomalous arms” consist mostly of gas. This composite image, and work done by an international team of astronomers, confirmed earlier suspicions that the ghostly arms represent regions of gas that are being violently heated by shock waves.

Read more about this image and the science behind it at the Chandra website.

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/telescope responsible for this picture. Post your guesses in the comments section, and check back on later 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!

I have to admit, the “Patrick Stewart” answer made me laugh out loud, but really, (as most of you guessed) this is an ultraviolet image of Venus’ clouds as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide-Field/Planetary Camera 2 taken on January 24 1995, when Venus was at a distance of 70.6 million miles (113.6 million kilometers) from Earth.

You can read more about this image, including why there is a “Y”-shaped pattern in the clouds, at this webpage from NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center.

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 instrument responsible for the image. We’ll provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until later in the week. 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!

Tsk, tsk. A few of you posted links in your answer — that’s not allowed. Remember — no links or extensive explanations.

This rather creepy-looking image could be construed as a cavern or the mouth of monster. It is actually a storm of billowing clouds blown by the winds from massive stars, and set aglow by their light. This is a nebula within cluster NGC1929, known as the N44 superbubble. This particular image was taken by the Gemini Multi-object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the Gemini South Telescope in Chile. You can read more about it on this press release from Gemini, or this previous article on Universe Today, or this ESO article

It’s time once again for another Where In The Universe Challenge. This image was sent in by UT reader Brian Hinson. Name where in the Universe this image was taken and give yourself extra points if you can name exactly what it is. Post your guesses in the comments section, and check back on later 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!

This very otherworldly-looking image was — as many of you guessed — taken on Earth (although I liked the Besspin and Venus references!) Brian Hinson VLA submitted a few images he took while out for a plane ride. “I took a friend flying over the VLA here in New Mexico and took some other-worldly shots of the
antennas with some ground fog,” he wrote. “I thought perhaps you could do a WITU….The VLA has done so much historic radio astronomy work over the decades that they need a nod, methinks.”

So here’s the nod: Check out the VLA website (where you can see images of the antennas without the fog!)

Also, Brian has a Flickr page where you can see a few more of his VLA images, and more.

Thanks Brian, for sending in your unique image. If anyone else has images or suggestions for a future WITU, let Nancy know.

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 instrument 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: Answer now posted below!

This is cluster Abell 901b, taken in 2008 by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Hubble has mapped the invisible dark matter as well as the detailed structure of individual galaxies embedded in it. The magenta clumps throughout the image reveal the distribution of dark matter in the cluster. You can see a larger image of the entire Abell supercluster, as well as more information, at the HubbleSite.

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 instrument 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 is now posted below.

This image from the Cassini spacecraft shows Saturn’s moon Dione, in the foreground with Tethys behind.

Tethys appears brighter because it has a higher albedo than Dione, meaning Tethys reflects more sunlight. This higher albedo is due to Tethys being closer to the moon Enceladus and the E ring. Bright debris spews from Enceladus, feeding the E ring. This debris then coats Enceladus and Tethys with bright material.

See more about this image at the Cassini website.