Earlier this year, NASA's Europa Mission Tweeted the following photo:
"One of these is Jupiter's moon Europa," they wrote, "the rest are frying pans."
We're sure you're trying to guess which of these is the real deal, but before we get to that, where did these images come from? While the photo of the actual Europa was snapped by their Galileo spacecraft in the 1990s, are we to believe that NASA techs are sitting around shooting photos of spent frying pans?
No, they're not. The frying pan shots are the work of Norwegian photographer Christopher Jonassen, who began shooting his Devour and Devour II series—"Still life photography of worn-out frying pans"—in 2010 or earlier.
In 2013 someone on Starship Asterisk, an online forum for astronomy geeks, began posting Jonassen's photos in the APOD (Astronomy Photo of the Day) section alongside photos of the real Europa. They subsequently ran seven "Moon or Frying Pan?" quizzes featuring Jonassen's work, properly crediting him. It appears that this quiz is what whomever handles NASA's EM Twitter account drew from.
In any case, have you figured out which of the photos in the Brady Bunch shot is the real Europa?
It's this one:
It's tough to pick it out from a field of nine, but at least one member of the Starship Asterisk forum found it easier in side-by-sides like the one below—and not by drawing on his astronomy knowledge:
"Speaking as a professional cook," the poster writes, "this one was a bit too easy. If you could somehow parley the sheen of grease into a sense of scope and distance, then you would have a challenge indeed!"
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Comments
Before I even read the article, I scanned through and thought "Wow, I don't know any of these moons. Well, that one is Europa, but the others are all new to me." I take it that's not considered normal behavior for a graphic designer.