Category: Where In the Universe?

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 has now been posted below.

This is Pingualuit Crater in northern Quebec, on Earth. It was first seen by a crew from a United States Army Air Force plane in 1943, and was one of the first craters in this region to be identified as an impact crater. This image was taken by NASA’s Landsat 7 satellite on August 17, 2002. In this image, water appears blue, and land appears in varying shades of beige. The high latitude of the area limits vegetation, so thick, lush forests do not flourish in this region. In fact, the crater’s name derives from an Inuktitut term for cold-weather-induced skin blemishes.

Read more about Pingualuit Crater at the NASA Earth Observatory website.

This post is going to serve double duty. First of all, I forgot to mention that the answer for last week’s WITU Challenge has been posted, so if you are wondering if it was either some sort of blobby nebula or a Klingon Bird of Prey decloaking, (thanks, IVAN3MAN) you can find the answer on last week’s WITU post.

Now, for this week, take a look at the image above and see if you can name where in the Universe this image is from. Give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft 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. 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 Jupiter’s moon Io, as seen by the Galileo spacecraft. This mosaic is made up of 32 monochrome images take by Galileo’s imaging system which had spatial resolutions up to 1 km/pixel. Learn more about this image here.

And check back next week for another test of your visual knowledge of the cosmos!

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!

UPDATE: The answer has now been posted below.

This is what is called the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula, or IC 1396 in the constellation of Cepheus. Located at a distance of 2,450 light-years, there is an elongated dark globule within the emission nebula, which is a condensation of dense gas that is barely surviving the strong ionizing radiation from a nearby massive star. The globule is being compressed by the surrounding ionized gas.

You can read more about this image on the Spitzer 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 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 has now been posted below.

This is Mars, from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and this is a new image that was just released this week. It’s from the Gordii Dorsum region, which is an equatorial area just west of the Thasis bulge. The image shows a large area covered with polygonal ridges in an almost geometric pattern. If you remember, there were polygon features around the Phoenix landing site near the Mars Arctic region, and scientists thought they were created from freezing and thawing of suburface ice. But these polygons are huge, and Nicolas Thomas of the HiRISE teams writes,” The ridges may have originally been dunes which hardened (indurated) through the action of an unknown process. Groundwater might have been involved.”

See more about this image at the HiRISE site.

Ready for another Where In The Universe Challenge? Here’s #105! 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 responsible for the image. We 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.

On July 20, 1976 the Viking 1 Lander separated from the the Viking Orbiter and touched down at Chryse Planitia. This image was taken on the 28th sol or Martian day of the mission. As you may know, the Viking 1 lander has now been surpassed in having the record of longest surface mission on Mars — the Opportunity just passed Viking 1’s duration of six years and 116 days operating on the surface of Mars.

The imaging team from Viking were basically learning on the fly on how to calibrate the color for the images, so some early images tended to show “blue” sky, while later reconstructions, trying to account for out-of-band contributions in each filter, tended to show a “red” sky, and often an “orange” surface. Owing to calibration uncertainties, the exact reconstruction of Viking Lander color images remains more or less an art. But what a heady time that must have been in 1976, having two landers on Mars, both working successfully!

Learn more about the Viking lander images and mosaics here.

Check back next week for another WITU challenge!

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 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. This week’s WITU challenge was submitted by UT reader, the Hon. Salacious B. Crumb — thanks Salicious! 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 might be a WITU first. No one got the right answer! (although Jon came close…)

This is NGC 7702, a very unusual ring galaxy found in the southern constellation Phoenix, (at 23h 35m 29.1s ?56deg 00′ 45″). Lots of telescopes have taken images of this object, but this image if from the European Southern Observatory, and you can see the image here. This abstract from R. Buta at the University of Alabama describes the galaxy as, “NGC 7702 is found to be a true S0(+) galaxy with a bright high-contrast inner ring and a faint low-contrast outer ring; the inner ring is significantly elongated relative to typical SB inner rings and has colors which suggest a burst of star formation less than 2 Gyr ago.”

Thanks again — and kudos — to the Hon. Salacious B. Crumb for sending in this image, which seems to have stumped everyone this week!

Check back next week for another WITU challenge!

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 has now been posted below.

This is an infrared image from Hubble of Uranus, taken way back in 1998. The rings really stand out in infrared, so we can see that the planet is surrounded by its four major rings — and if you look closely — by 10 of its 17 known satellites.

Also visible are clouds — about 20 in all, nearly as many clouds on Uranus as the previous total in the history of modern observations. The orange-colored clouds near the prominent bright band circle the planet at more than 300 mph (500 km/h). One of the clouds on the right-hand side is brighter than any other cloud ever seen on Uranus, at least back in 1998.

Credit for this image goes to Erich Karkoschka from the University of Arizona and, of course, NASA. See more about this image at the HubbleSite.

Check back later this week for another WITU challenge!

Ready for another Where In The Universe Challenge? Here’s #102! 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 responsible for the image. We 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 the Apollo 17 landing site as seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter camera. The image was part of a set of images, the first taken by LROC of the Apollo landing sites, from July 2009. See more at this link at the LRO website

Check back next week for another WITU Challenge!

We’re on to the next cto, yibai, cien, cento, hundred of Where In The Universe Challenges. 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.

In honor of Hubble’s 20th birthday, this is an image from the venerable HST, taken shortly after the final repair mission. This is a portion of an image taken by Hubble in July 2009 of the galaxy cluster Abell 370. This is one of the very first galaxy clusters where astronomers observed the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, where the warping of space by the cluster’s gravitational field distorts the light from galaxies lying far behind it. So, the background galaxies appear stretched, and the image also includes as arcs and streaks. This image was taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys. You can see a larger version and more info at the HubbleSite.