Where In The Universe #18

By Nancy Atkinson - August 27, 2008 at 5:42 PM UTC | Observing
where-in-the-universe-18.jpg

Here's this week's "Where In The Universe?" mystery image. The goal of this challenge is to test your skills and visual knowledge of our universe. Guess where this image is from, and give yourself extra points if you can guess which spacecraft is responsible for the image. As always, don't peek below before you make your guess. Comments on how you did are welcome.

Ready? Proceed...

This is a brand new image from the Cassini spacecraft orbiting the Saturn system, which took this image of the moon Janus. Janus is 179 kilometers, or 111 miles across, and this view shows a perspective 72 degrees north of the moon's equator. The image was taken with Cassini's narrow-angle camera on July 14, 2008 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 752 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 259,000 kilometers (161,000 miles) from Janus. image scale is 2 kilometers (5,085 feet) per pixel.

How'd you do?

For more info about the image,

click here.

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