Most of their videos are a few years old, but I only recently stumbled across the YouTube channel of New World Maps. They have a number of short, practical videos aimed at map buyers and map owners who want to display their maps: tips for framing maps, for flattening maps so they can be framed (above), for dealing with small chips and tears (at least on inexpensive maps), among other subjects. Useful—and not just for maps.

Tom Patterson’s projects are always worthy of note. His latest is a wall map of Alaska’s Prince William Sound—a physical relief map that, Tom warns, will very soon be out of date:

Prince William Sound turned out being the most laborious map that I have ever made. The culprit: climate change. Although much of the data that went into making the map was of recent vintage, glaciers in the region have melted noticeably these last few years.

Updating physical features—glaciers, coastlines, rivers, and lakes—from recent satellite images took up ninety percent of my time. Nevertheless, the completed map is only a snapshot in time. Columbia Glacier, for example, lost another one kilometer of its length during the summer of 2019. Much of what the map depicts will be out-of-date again before too long.

It can be downloaded, printed (it’s 44 × 36 inches) and modified free of charge.

With the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 almost upon us, there’s been an uptick in moon-related content, which includes moon-related map content. For example:

New Exhibition. Opening today at The Map House in London, The Mapping of the Moon: 1669-1969, an exhibition of three centuries of lunar cartography. “The exhibition includes rare early 17th and 18th Century observations of the moon from astronomers such as Athanasius Kircher and Jean-Dominique Cassini, important maps produced by NASA for lunar exploration, globes and signed material by astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean and Jim Lovell.” Runs until 21 July. [ARTFIXDaily]

New Map. The July 2019 issue of National Geographic has a new map of the Moon that updates the 1969 painted version (see above) with a mosaic based on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imagery. I don’t know whether that means a physical version of the map will be included with the issue as an insert, but I hope it does.

New Way to Navigate. NASA has a post on using GPS on the Moon. Now, I’d thought that using GPS on another world would require the deployment of a GPS satellite constellation around said world. No, this is about using Earth-orbiting GPS signals for lunar navigation, which simulations suggest is possible. The mind boggles.

It was announced today at NACIS that the Equal Earth projection is now available as a wall map—which is a necessary thing if it’s going to go toe-to-toe with the Peters map. The political wall map is only available as a download (three versions, centred on Africa and Europe, the Americas, or the Pacific): the 19,250 × 10,150-pixel, 350 dpi file results in a 1.4 × 0.74 m (55″ × 29″) print—assuming you have access to a large-format plotter. Not everyone does, so it’s only a matter of time, I suspect, before they have prints available for sale.

The map shows countries and territories in surprising detail (it includes Clipperton, for example); and while it does show disputed regions as such, its choices of boundaries and nomenclature won’t make it many fans in South Korea or India.

Previously: The Equal Earth Projection; Equal Earth Updates; More on Equal Earth.

The World Metro Map is a digital collage of every metro system and station—well, 214 systems and 11,924 stations—overlaid on top of one another. A Kickstarter project, it’s available as a poster in two different sizes. [via]