Categories: Where In the Universe?

Where In The Universe #130

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 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 the Moon, specifically the big rock in the middle is a close-up of a 320 meter block of ejecta in Tycho crater covered by a veneer of impact melt. The image was taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera earlier in 2010.

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Tycho crater is one of the most visible features on the near side of the Moon, and its ray system extends far and wide. So much so that the Apollo 17 astronauts sampled its ejecta, over ,2000 km away from the crater! That is amazing!

See more images of Tycho and learn more at the LROC website.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/