Ceres – The Map Room

Moons and Planets added to Google Maps

Published on 17 October 201717 October 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

The Moon and Mars were relatively early additions to Google Earth; that application may have been migrated to the web, but the planets and moons keep coming. Yesterday Google announced the addition of a dozen other worlds in our solar system; the space layer of Google Maps now includes planets Mercury, Venus and Mars; dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto;¹ Jupiter’s moons Io, Europa and Ganymede; and Saturn’s moons Dione, Enceladus, Iapetus, Mimas, Rhea and Titan. Large moons Callisto and Triton aren’t included, and Iapetus is projected onto a sphere rather than appearing as the bizarre space walnut it is.

The Planetary Society’s Emily Lakdawalla noticed a thing, though:

Anybody know who I should talk to at @Google to let them know that several of the icy moon maps have names & image offset by 180 degrees?

— Lady Lakdawalla of Baltis Vallis (@elakdawalla) October 16, 2017

Emily reports that this bug affects several moons of Jupiter and Saturn; Google is apparently already on it and may have fixed it by the time you read this.

More Maps of Ceres

Published on 30 September 201518 November 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

False colour compositional map of Ceres — NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

New maps of Ceres were released today at the European Planetary Science Conference in Nantes, France. One is a colour-coded topopgraphical map that resembles a map we saw earlier but adds newly approved names for topographical features. Another, the false-colour map seen above, combines imagery through infrared, red and blue filters and highlights compositional differences on Ceres’ surface (different materials reflect light at different frequencies).

New Maps of Ceres and Pluto

Published on 29 July 201518 November 2017 by Jonathan Crowe

As I predicted, a new global map of Pluto has been released that incorporates the imagery that has been downlinked so far from the New Horizons flyby: with gridlines, without gridlines. If nothing else, the equatorial projection demonstrates how much of Pluto’s surface was not seen during the very brief encounter. From what I understand, imagery downlinks will resume in September and carry on for another year, so this map will almost certainly see many more updates.

Meanwhile, Ceres also has some new maps.

Continue reading “New Maps of Ceres and Pluto” →

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.