Where In The Universe?

By Nancy Atkinson - April 30, 2008 at 6:05 AM UTC | Cosmology
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The past couple of weeks we've had a 'mystery' image, and asked our readers to guess what world in our solar system was featured in the image. Most everyone seemed to enjoy it, and it was fairly popular, so we've decided to make it a regular feature. I was going to call it the 'Wednesday Where in the World (and What World) Is This?' but that's just too long, not to mention too many W's in one headline. So to brief it up, and since this is "Universe Today," we've decided to call it "Where In The Universe?" Look for it every Wednesday.

Above is this week's mystery image. If you keep an eye on the images being released by the various spacecraft traveling our solar system, you may have seen this one before. Remember, you have 8 planets, 169 known moons, a handful of dwarf planets and lots of asteroids in our solar system to choose from. Don't cheat -- make your guess before you click to continue...

This is an image of Saturn's moon Titan, taken by the Huygen's probe as it descended through Titan's thick atmosphere and down to the surface. It's a Mercator projection, or a flattened image of the curved globe of Titan. Don't feel bad if you guessed Mars -- the coloring and mountains are reminiscent of Mars, or even some areas on Earth. It's exciting to know that Titan has those similar features, too.

This is a full poster of images taken at four different altitudes from the descent imager/spectral radiometer on the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, showing aerial views of the landing site. The images were taken on Jan. 14, 2005. Coming up in less than 12 days, Cassini will flyby Titan at a fairly close proximity, at about 1000 km (621 miles) above the surface of this interesting moon. The flyby will be on May 12, 2008.

Cassini website

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