Where In The Universe #41

By Nancy Atkinson - February 4, 2009 at 3:47 PM UTC | Observing
where-in-the-universe-41.jpg

Are you ready for another Where In The Universe Challenge? Take a look at the image above and see if you can name where in the Universe this image is from. Give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the image. We'll 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. Check back tomorrow on this same post to see how you did. Good luck!

UPDATE: The answer to this Challenge has now been posted below. Don't peek at the answer until you make a guess!

This image is of oil slicks in the Gulf of Mexico on Earth. No, its not from an oil spill, but from natural seepage coming from the ocean floor. Natural seepage can introduces a significant amount of oil to ocean environments. Usually oil slicks on the ocean are difficult to see in natural-color (photo-like) satellite images, since the ocean surface is already so dark blue, the additional darkening or slight color change that results from a spill is usually imperceptible.

But remote-sensing scientists recently demonstrated that these "invisible" oil slicks do show up in photo-like images if you look in the right place, and if the sun is just at the right angle. The image above is a cropped version of the larger image below, showing the Gulf of Mexico, taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite on May 13, 2006.

[caption id="attachment_24740" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="Gulf of Mexico oil slick. Credit: NASA/Terra Satellite"]

[/caption]

For more info on these images, see

NASA's Earth Observatory website

How did 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