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Where In The Universe Challenge #132

by Nancy Atkinson on January 12, 2011

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Here’s this week’s Where In The Universe Challenge. 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.

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UPDATE: The answer has now been posted below.

This is a view of the interior of a crater on the northern hemisphere of Mars — just below the polar ice cap — which has ice and polygon-shaped cracks, commonly found where subsurface water freezes and thaws during the variations in Mars’ seasons. The image was taken by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2008. Find out more about his image at the HiRISE website. And check back later this week for another test of your visual knowledge of the cosmos!

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About

Nancy Atkinson is Universe Today's Senior Editor. She also is the host of the NASA Lunar Science Institute podcast and works with the Astronomy Cast and 365 Days of Astronomy podcasts. Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador.

Tagged as: Where In the Universe?

  • J. Major

    This sure smells like a HiRISE image of Mars’ polar region to me!

  • vagueofgodalming

    It smells more like the cheese I found at the back of my fridge…

  • EWigg

    Really think we should search for life on Europa

  • ScottieD

    Its a mars polar image taken in summer, mars summer time to be precise(march 14 2008 at 2:20 mars local time). The image has ice on it although in the summer it is still to cold for that to melt. the crater is located in the northern hemisphere. Sorry for that extensive thingy, its hard to explain something with little description.

  • areyoumadbro

    It’s so easy, this is clearly an image of the universe as a whole, a grand scaled image of what it looks like in it’s entirety.

  • Feenixx

    a leaf on a weed in Ms Atkinson’s back garden, taken with a compact camera in “Macro” mode ?

  • Mr.No.Scope

    Dry, dead skin on a bald pate. Or, since this IS where in the universe, a HIRISE photo of Mars.

  • Jon

    It’s a closeup of some mud in Nancy’s back yard after a rain.

  • r0blar

    Cool if that could be Sun’s surface in false colour… but it looks HiRISE Mars like hell.

  • neoguru

    Donno… But I’ll guess! Europa?

  • http://www.aykayem.blogspot.com aykayem

    Mudcracks (or whatever else the find out they are once we can go there and look at them) on Mars … probably HiRISE, on the MRO

  • http://www.aykayem.blogspot.com aykayem

    … or it could be a footpath in the Brisbane CBD after the floodwaters have receeded ;-)

  • drylandwill

    This is a leaf, species unidentifiable. The instrument is an optical microscope at moderately low power.

  • joed293

    surely a leaf, perhaps a good SLR camera

  • santafedog

    It reminds me of pictures of the suns surface with the patterns of the nuclear reaction and i dont remember the names of the solar flare observing satallites.

  • fvalk

    With such perfect fractal structure it is all the same on all scales: filaments of the universe at large, nerve and cells in a leaf, dried broken soil, pancake ice in the Antarctic, granules on the sun, ….
    But in this particular image I suppose polar ice on Mars by HIRISE in spring, where ice on the ridges and the ‘flat’ stand out differently.

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