http://www.google.com/mars/

With the open Google Maps API you could have some interesting mashups - overlays for the current position of the groundtrack of the various orbiters for example, Day\night, Insolation...

Does the API work with Google Mars? If so, I'm not able to figure out the proper URL. For example, their "hello world" URL is:

<script src="http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=1&key=KEY" type="text/javascript"></script>

mars.google.com/mars, www.google.com/mars don't work...

I can't see any reason why it shouldn't and I assumed it would without checking _but_ there is nothing out there that actually says it is open, hmmh. I'll start plugging away this evening.

I asked on the Google Maps API discussion group and got this reply from a user in Finland in slightly fractured English:

"Google Mars use made using API v2 but the map material custom. There are no parameters in GPoint() how to specify other Milky Way satellites than the Earth."

So that's saying the main URL would stay the same, but GPoint() needs a new parameter to specify Mars or whatever. The "hello world" example makes a map centered on Palo Alto with the following command:

map.centerAndZoom(new GPoint(-122.1419, 37.4419), 4);

If true then I guess it's no go. Not sure if that answer is authoritative...

This was made with google Mars:
http://themis.asu.edu/valles_video

No it wasn't. It was made with the same data that was used to make google mars.
We used the same source data for both the video and google mars.

And you can't use the mars data with the public api just yet. That'll be coming soon, though.

Nice work, Noel.

Very Nice work in any case - it's extremely cool.

Thanks for the update, much appreciated. Gives me a chance to get up to speed with the Maps API(s).

Semi-related, I just noticed that the Google "banner image" today has a Mars theme - presumably to celebrate Percival Lowell's 151st birthday

I was just thinking the same thing as regards myself... funny that

What would be ideal is if JPL (say with the Horizons website) would have a web app that generates an XML file with the real-time positions (& maybe velocities) of the usual suspects, which people could use from there for Google Mars visualizations.

And it is the 225th anniversary of the discovery of Uranus by Sir William Herschel
in 1781, which he first mistook for a comet.

I fought hard to get that logo!

Our NAIF servers already deliver real-time position information in a web friendly format.
The app that displays the spacecraft positons for the maps api is already in the works, and will likely be what we launch the "mars data now available in the public api" changes with.

I hope for your server's sake that that code scales.

Seriously, this is a nice outreach effort but I'm not sure what Google's motivation or long-term commitment is. And what's with all of those gaps in the IR mosaic? (I guess I have to take the blame for the MOC mosaic looking like crap in spots.)

If you could drill down to individual MOC NA frames, that would be cool!

Let a thousand websites bloom...

Or was careful to avoid initially portraying as anything more significant.

Keep in mind that in 1781 the concept that a new planet could be discovered was completely mind-boggling -- it had never happened before, and as far as everyone was concerned the Solar System ended at Saturn. That was the way it had always been, and nothing Galileo or Copernicus had said changed that. To discover the third-largest planetary body in the Solar System -- to, at a stroke, almost double the size of the system -- these were weighty matters. Even if you suspected that what you had found was a new planet (and what an imaginative leap it took to even hope that!) it was doubtless safest to make as little of it as possible and guard against possible embarrassment (at least in the scientific climate of that country and century; Galileo, who trumpeted his discoveries to every corner of Europe, was constrained by no such scruples, though he risked far greater dangers than mere embarrassment).

In 1816, Keats, on looking into Chapman's Homer, felt "like some watcher of the skies/ when a new planet swims into his ken" (the description of a planet "swimming" into view can, I think, only have originated with someone who had actually used an optical telescope). At that time Herschel's Uranus was the only object we'd call a planet that had yet been discovered; though Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta had been discovered a decade or so earlier and were still regarded as "planets". But the idea of discovering a new planet was still regarded as a synonym for wonder.

In considering the plight of poor 2003 UB313, compared to Uranus we may consider ourselves lucky; "Xena" may get a name and identity before the year is out, but Uranus had to wait decades -- in some places almost 70 years! -- before it had a name that was generally accepted.

Well said!

Re Google Mars API support: in the USENET Google Maps thread talking about a possible Google Mars API, the following post was made tonight:

Hey with Google Mars, I can finally follow all the terrian and references in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series!! Wahoo!

Apparently there is also Google Moon (moon.google.com). Funny thing is, try to zoom all the way in to the Moon

You'll notice I didn't actually mention WHERE our naif server lives. :^)


I think their motivation was just doing something cool. They're a company FULL of PhDs and geeks (just like my group and yours), so they like this sort of thing and from what I've learned about google while working with them, that's all it takes.

As for long-term commitment, I hope they continue to do this (and more!) for a long time, but in reality, it's no sweat if they don't. Their new Maps API lets you use your own tile servers (or someone elses; there's a version that speaks WMS), and there's now several clones of their API if for some strange reason they stopped providing that.


We manually examined every image and rejected about 1/3 of them as being too cold and therefore too noisy. (thank you GRS) That was last August. Since then we've started on the 100m version and that'll include 9 more months of images specifically targeted to fill the holes.


You don't have to, but you might as well, since we blame you for it. :^)


Gee, you're good. Can you guess what else I'm working on?

In lieue of the Google Mars API, here's an example of something that could be done, showing the subpoint of MRO over Earth:

MRO Google Map

It shows the real-time position at the time the page was loaded. Reload the page to update. If you zoom out, the DSN stations are marked.

Here's a similar map that automatically updates every minute:

continuous MRO Google Map

Interesting to play with anyway... not sure what kind of mashup would have a real utility.

So are we likely to see, eventually, Google Mars with Themis, MOC and Hirise imagery in there?

If so - will the MOC-NA and Hirise imagery be referenced in such a way that one can refer back to the orig released imagery outside of Google?

The Themis and MGS MOC browsing maps are not too bad actually ( Themis just get's the nod, but obviously these systems take quite a lot of time and thus money to get working properly, and the MOC one is simply older) - but a unifed system is so overdue - and JMars is a clunky evil beast to use

Doug

This is certainly possible, but I don't know how plausible it is yet and I'm not sure if I can convince google to do it. There are also numerous technical hurdles to overcome. Want to help?


There's (still) only so much you can do in a browser, and as advanced browser technologies become standardized (AJAX, SVG, etc), we've been moving to use them. We're also always working to improve JMARS, so send us feedback about what you want fixed/streamlined/replaced/etc.