This Week's "Where In The Universe" Challenge

By Nancy Atkinson - August 13, 2008 at 11:27 AM UTC | Observing
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It's time once again for this week's Where In The Universe challenge. Take a look at the image above and try to determine where in the universe this image was taken. Give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for taking this image. As always, no peeking below for the before you make your guess.

Here's one more image of this object.

Ready for the answer?

These are images of Neptune's moon Proteus. Needless to say, Proteus is not one of the better-known moons of our solar system. Did you recognize it? Proteus was discovered in 1989 by the only spacecraft that has flown by Neptune, Voyager 2. Though Proteus (400 km diameter) is larger than Neptune's better known moon, Nereid (340 km, which was discovered in 1949 by Gerard Kuiper) Proteus was not discovered earlier because it is very dark and so close to Neptune that it is difficult to see in the glare of the much brighter planet.

Proteus has an irregular almost box-like shape, and scientists believe it is probably about as big as an irregular body can be before its gravity pulls it into a more spherical configuration.

There's not a lot of action on Proteus. The heavily cratered surface shows no signs of geologic activity.

Other than those facts, there's not much to say about Proteus. As Bill Arnett says on his

Nine Planets website,

"We know next to nothing about Proteus." We've not sent a spacecraft to go visit and study Neptune and its moons specifically, and although

NASA was considering sending a probe to Neptune a few years ago

, it appears such a mission has been put on the back burner.

How'd you do in this week's challenge?

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com