Ready for another Where In The Universe Challenge? Here’s #125! 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 tomorrow. 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: Answer now posted below.
This is one of Saturn’s moons, Calypso, and the image was taken in February 2010.
Calypso is shaped pretty strangely for a moon, and it is one of two Trojan moons of the larger moon Tethys — the other is Telesto. Calypso trails Tethys in its orbit by 60 degrees. Like Telesto, Calypso’s smooth surface does not appear to retain the record of intense cratering that most of Saturn’s other moons have.
This view looks toward the leading hemisphere of Calypso (21 kilometers, or 13 miles across).
Hail, Calypso!
Since two have already got the correct answer, I will just say that it is very clearly the front of a lost space shuttle from the lost civilization of Atlantis. Our government found it in orbit around the moon during the Apollo missions in the 1970’s and have been covering it up..they covered it moon regolith and added fake craters to make it look like an asteroid. It is where we got the basic design for our space shuttle. Much of the tech for our shuttle was reverse engineered from this Atlantis shuttle. It is also the reason one of our shuttles was named Atlantis.
Its the new Jordan’s. They finally decided to get rid of the laces since most of the people who bought them couldn’t figure them out.
Calypso!
It was imaged by Cassini last February.
It’s a shark.
Calypso image from Cassini!
J. Major, Majid and Emperiumsolic are definitely right.. but the direction is unsettling, as all the pictures I can find show Calypso in an opposite orientation… So what’s the truth?
“….all the pictures I can find show Calypso in an opposite orientation… So what’s the truth?”
It’s Anti-Calypso!….the lesser known, rarely seen, co-orbital moon. 🙂
Jon… its in your answer.. orientation. Obviously the orientation will change based on the orientation of the observer. Observe is, move to the opposite side and observe again, voila… it flipped directions.
Herkfixer – Definitely the orientation of the observer plays a big part in how many celestial objects appear to us but in this case, I think the confusion exists because the illustration itself appears to be flipped( twice in this case-both vertically and horizontally) compared to other (identically lit) images of Calypso. A quick google image search turned up several instances of flipped images of Calypso like this double-flipped one(at the bottom of the page): http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2010/02/27/my-flight-to-the-mushroom-planet/
Btw, I have no idea what the ‘proper’ view of this image of Calypso is…the Cassini site would probably be of some help here.