Mars – Page 2 – The Map Room

Green Mars

Published on 22 April 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Kenneth Field’s map of Mars (note updated link) now includes an option to add oceans, with checkboxes to fill the landscape to various elevations.

You can irrigate the planet below the areoid on this map using the water layers. You’ll notice the water layers aren’t blue. On Earth, water appears blue due to red, orange, yellow and green wavelengths of light being absorbed more strongly than blue and also the reflectence of the blue sky. Since Mars has relatively little atmosphere and it’s farther from the sun it’s likely water will appear differently. We’re imagining wavelengths will be absorbed differently, perhaps returning an alien green?

[Maps Mania] A print version is also available: it’s a one-gigabyte PDF that measures 38″×72″ [Kenneth Field].

Previously: Kenneth Field’s Map of Mars.

Topographic Map of Mars

Published on 12 April 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

machacek-mars — Image credit: NASA/JPL/GSFC/ASU/USGS/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)/Daniel Macháček.

Daniel Macháček released his topographic map of Mars, based on the latest probe data, in November 2014. It uses the Mercator projection between 65° north and 65° south latitude and stereographic projections for the poles. It can be downloaded in insanely high resolution: 17,400×14,700 (78 MB JPEG, 106 MB PDF). His blog post (in Czech: use the translate button) has all the technical details. I particularly like the colour scheme he used for elevation data: the low-lying areas are coloured like deep oceans, which seems appropriate. [Maps on the Web]

New Gravity Map of Mars

Published on 21 March 201621 March 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

mars-gravity-hemispheres — MIT/UMBC-CRESST/GSFC

A new gravity map of Mars, based on data from three orbiting spacecraft, has been released. “Slight differences in Mars’ gravity changed the trajectory of the NASA spacecraft orbiting the planet, which altered the signal being sent from the spacecraft to the Deep Space Network. These small fluctuations in the orbital data were used to build a map of the Martian gravity field.”

Mars Gravity Map — NASA/GSFC/Scientific Visualization Studio

The data enables the crustal thickness of Mars to be determined to a resolution of approximately 120 kilometres. Here’s a short video explaining the significance:

Kenneth Field’s Map of Mars

Published on 20 March 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Another online map of Mars, this one titled (Is There) Life on Mars? and produced by Kenneth Field using ArcGIS. On the information pane he says, cryptically, “There’s a hidden element on the map that explains why I really made it. Happy hunting.” [via]

‘Here There Be Robots’: Eleanor Lutz’s Map of Mars

Published on 28 February 201628 February 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

Eleanor Lutz’s map of Mars isn’t exactly medieval in style (that’s not the right word for it), but it applies an ostensibly old aesthetic to a very modern map subject. “I thought it would be fun to use their historical design style to illustrate our current adventures into unexplored territory. […] Since the base map is hand-drawn I also added an overlay of actual NASA topographic imagery. This way even if some of my lines are a little off, you can still see what the actual ground looks like underneath.” Whatever you call it, it looks amazing. [via]

The Ordnance Survey Maps Mars

Published on 15 February 2016 by Jonathan Crowe

The Ordnance Survey has created a map of Mars. “The one-off Ordnance Survey Mars map, created using NASA open data and made to a 1:4,000,000 scale, is made to see if our style of mapping has potential for future Mars missions.” It looks very much like a topographic map of Mars might; the reduced version is a bit more screen-friendly.

Space Maps: Ceres, Mars, Exoplanets

Published on 15 April 201518 November 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Dawn’s first colour map of Ceres: map-projected false-colour images of the dwarf planet taken as the spacecraft approached, assembled from images taken through blue, green and infrared filters. (Previously: At Ceres.)
An elevation map of the Ares Vallis region of Mars (above) from the DLR, the German space agency (via io9).
A map of known exoplanets in the Milky Way; most of them were found during the Kepler mission, which pointed at a a particular region of space.

Geologic Map of Mars

Published on 16 July 201418 November 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Geologic Map of Mars

As I said during the Q&A part of my fantasy maps presentation at Readercon (see previous entry), maps of other worlds in the solar system are usually images from space probes that have been set to a map projection. The key word is usually. On Monday the U.S. Geological Survey released a geologic map of Mars that “brings together observations and scientific findings from four orbiting spacecraft that have been acquiring data for more than 16 years.” Via io9 and Wired.

More Map Books

Published on 17 January 201412 November 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

Here are some map books that I recently found out about:

Mr. Selden’s Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer by Timothy Brook (Bloomsbury Press/House of Anansi Press/Profile Books, 9/13). A book-length study of the enigmatic Selden Map of China, donated to the Bodleian Library in 1659 and only rediscovered in 2009. (Amazon)
The Golden Age of Maritime Maps: When Europe Discovered the World by Catherine Hoffman, Hélène Richard and Emmanuelle Vagnon (Firefly Books, 9/13). One of those big, illustrated books of old maps; this one looks at portolan charts. It’s an English translation of L’Âge d’or des cartes marines. (Amazon)
Maps of Paradise by Alessandro Scafi (University of Chicago Press, 11/13). Explores “the diverse ways in which scholars and mapmakers from the eighth to the twenty-first century rose to the challenge of identifying the location of paradise on a map, despite the certain knowledge that it was beyond human reach.” (Amazon)
The International Atlas of Mars Exploration: The First Five Decades, 1953 to 2003 by Philip J. Stooke (Cambridge University Press, 9/12). The first of two volumes (the second will be subtitled Spirit to Curiosity) that maps the extent of exploration by orbiters and landers. (Amazon, author’s page)