Canon PowerShot G9
ƒ/3.2
7.4 mm
1/60
80
Puzzle Series: What is this, or what do you want it to be?
At a high level, it is pretty obvious – so the key is to be specific about what exactly this thing is (it is not a photo of a photo)
37 responses to “What’s That? (92)”
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Enceladus – sixth-largest moon of Saturn
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus_(moon)The smoothness, shows a surface that has thawed and then froze, so there is not much crater debris
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mmh, cheese!
Given the shallow DOF it’s something pretty small, probably 10-20cm across. Also, as it was taken with your Canon PowerShot G9 I think it’s unlikely to be the surface of the moon – unless you completely skipped the Lunar X Prize and went straight to manned lunar missions… 🙂
Those little coloured scratches/marks look like they’re not meant to be there… maybe it is a scale model of the moon? Or a detail of a slightly unusual model railway?Or, it could be a petri dish with bacterial colonies… or nano-bots in the initial stages of replication and self-assembly…
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Partial Bingo steelhive!! I did just get a piece of an Apollo Lunar Module simulator… As prior participants in this puzzle have begged for it not to end before 24 hrs, let me give this partial feedback now… and ask what piece in particular? What region of the moon are we looking at? Why is this special?
Good aspirational guesses too!
conformation_change: funny thing… I do not have an O motor… but I am unloading a Q motor this morning for transfer to get it anodized. -
I’m going to guess a model of Apollo 15’s landing site. I saw several landing sites here and that one has the most similar terrain, from what I can tell.
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Knowing how you embed clues, Steve… the term exercise makes me think this may be a Moon Stress Ball!
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Based on this map:
http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/imagery/Apollo/FIGURES/traver...
I’d say its 14. The doublet/triplet topo seems to match…as do the pen/scratch marks near the proposed (and actual) landing site.
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Bingo sbove & steelhive!
This is the surface plate from the Apollo 14 lunar simulator showing the landing target and site for the mission. The LM simulator showed images of the moon in the windows generated by a camera flying over this detailed surface. I’ll post another photo of the full plate, perhaps the only surviving one from the Apollo program.
Here is the general area
with prominent landmarks and orbital paths overlayed. “Triplet” and “Doublet” were prominent beacons to land between.
Compared to my photo, the shadows are different, and you can see how the lighting changes the prominence of certain valleys.
The tough exercise for the second EVA of Apollo 14 was the hike to Cone Crater, up a steep incline, in bulky suits and with a poor map. It was the first time astronauts had left sight of their lunar module. They ultimately turned back, 30 meters shy of their goal as they were running low on oxygen. (good site for more info and photos)
The first Lunar Orbiter, in 1967, captured the site before the footsteps, and here you can see the path overlay:
These images were recently recovered in an amazing project I saw in the making, buried in a Pirate McDonalds
From the more recent NASA LRO, you can see the Apollo 14 LM and actual astronaut footprints on the moon:
…if you believe that whole moon landing science thing…
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Neat. Even though I was only a young teenager, I can still remember my excitement and the anticipation of each of the moon missions. So long ago…….
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