Where In The Universe Challenge #38



Are you up for another 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 responsible for the image. As usual, 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 — if you’re up to the challenge! Check back tomorrow on this same post to see how you did. Good luck!

UPDATE: (1/15) The answer has been posted below. No peeking before you make your guess!

As many of you guessed (knew), these are radar images taken by the Cassini spacecraft of Saturn’s moon Titan. The image shows dunes 330 feet (100 meters) high that run parallel to each other for hundreds of miles at Titan’s equator. One dune field runs more than 930 miles (1500 km) long.

The images look just like radar images of deserts in Africa, as seen below, showing that similar wind-driven processes might be taking place on Titan:

Top image courtesy Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center; bottom image
Top image courtesy Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center; bottom image

Great job, everyone. Come back again next week for another WITU Challenge!

22 Replies to “Where In The Universe Challenge #38”

  1. I’ll eat my hat if this isn’t a radar image showing a dune field in one of the dry seas of Titan. Spacecraft? Cassini.

  2. As much as I like to disagree, Titan it is, Cassini.

    Agreed!

  3. This is a hard one, I don’t know what it is.
    But I’ll take a guess.

    The Suns Corona by Ulysses????

  4. Is the bottom image in the update a radar image of Earth?!

    If so, I’m glad you didn’t ask us to guess that one; I’d have to eat my hat if you had… 😉

  5. I couln´t find the planet where this picture was taken. I thougt it was the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Wow !!!!

    Augusto.

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