Guess the Planet 1: Black and White

 

This is the first “Guess the Planet” post, in which I’ll be sharing some striking images from various parts of the solar system. On Monday I’ll post a picture devoid of any context or explanation, and then give you a few days to speculate as to where it is from and what it shows. Then on Friday I will do a follow up post which explains the figure, and includes all of the context information needed to interpret it.

 Generally these will consist of what are called “remote sensing” images. These include air photographs and satellite images. They are very valuable for earth and planetary scientists, as they allow us to see the context of a site, and explore the landscape from above.

Clearly we only have air photos from Earth, since that is the only planet where we have planes. Satellite images can be sourced from somewhat further afield. We have sent probes to a large number of solar system bodies and orbiters remain above several of them, constantly sending back data for us to peruse. I could say a lot more about how well instrumented the different planets have been, but that sounds like the topic for another post.

On to the images themselves!

I’m going to be breaking several rules in this column, because there are three things that every image needs to have in order to be useful, and I’m not going to be including any of them in the initial post. The first and most critical is a scale bar. This shows you how large an area is and allows you to gauge the relative sizes of the different elements within the image.

The second is a north arrow; which tells you which way up the image goes, and how it fits into the area around it. In most cases including these elements wouldn’t be too much of a giveaway for those trying to work out what they show, but occasionally I’m going to throw in a trick question, where the absence of this information might otherwise be suspicious. Rest assured that the follow up post for each image will include all of this information and put the picture in its proper geographic context.

The final element is the source and credit of the image. This is vitally important, because the people who did all the hard work of obtaining that image need to be given their due. Again this will be in the Friday post, as linking to the source of the image is a pretty good giveaway as to what it is. 

So enjoy this grid of squiggly white lines on a black-ish background. What is it, and on what planet can it be found? 

Tune in later in the week, to find out!