I have recently freaked out a little bit about Martian maps of all sorts. And finally I was astonished with those highly detailed beauties that I list below. Nonetheless. some of them have huge inconsistencies (crater names) easily noticed when we compare the surroundings of Gusev crater. Enjoy:

http://www.ralphaeschliman.com/
http://planetologia.elte.hu/1cikkeke.phtml...arsmapinte.html
http://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i2782/

http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/dataViz/

karolp, I have looked at these maps, and I don't see any real discrepancy with the names - I only checked around the Gusev area, since you mentioned it.

The apparent difference is caused by the fact that these maps only use a selectuion of all available names. Each map has a slightly different selection. For instance, the multilingual map from Hungary does not include the name 'de Vaucouleurs'. You need larger scale maps to include all the names which have been assigned to Mars. The USGS set at 1:5,000,000 is a good start, but of course there is the problem of updating.

Phil

I like the second USGS map.

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Nice hill shading, nice subtle colors, not the usual fully-saturated acid-trip color schemes you see in a lot of NASA images. My one criticism is that the hypsometric color pallette should go from dark to light monotonically with altitude. It's a little confusing that you go from light brown to dark brown and back to light brown again as you head up the Tharsis rise. Things to keep in mind when making your own maps.

Here are two wonderful sites about map making, full of good ideas and wise advice:

The National Park Service: Shaded Relief

History and techniques: Relief Shading. Explore this site, check out the section on Cartographers and examples of their work. What a fascinating art.

For example, look at this amazing projection of a map of Europe designed by Heinrich Berann:

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(By the way, to yank pictures out of the annoying pdf files, you can use PDFExtractTiff by verypdf.com)

Here are two constant-scale natural boundary maps of Mars showing color topography.
CSNB maps are made by a geometrical method of my own devising. These of Mars were suggested by Rene de Hon at the 2003 ISPRS meeting in Houston.

The "Mars as a dale" CSNB map has as its edge the primary ridges of the southern highlands. It's the view from the top down, so to speak, from the edge of the map inward.

The Mars as a hill" CSNB map has as its edge the primary valley-lines of the northern lowlands. It's the view from the bottom up, relative to the edge of the map inward.

The dividing line of the crustal dichotomy thus occurs as a ring around the middle of each map.

The maps or as twins, mirrored points of view.

The accompanying cylindrical insets show the boundaries of the respective CSNB maps.

Cheers

About three years ago, I've written an article on mapping the planet Mars and its Moons (with cylindrical projections of Phobos and Deimos provided by Philip Stooke ), more specifically about producing 3D models of the planet (4 foot diameter globes) and the Moons (made by Ralph Turner). E-mail me if You wont those articles in .pdf format...

here's an interesting comparison if anyone's interested. It's a comparison of global cylindrical (that is, simple cylindrical, or equirectangular) projection maps of Mars from Mariner 9, Viking and MGS. The Mariner 9 one is the 1975 USGS map, reprojected into Simple Cylindrical. Viking is the global mosaic made by USGS. MGS is a composite of TES albedo mapping and the MOC wide angle geodesy mosaic, both with artifacts removed. Some problems remain in all of them, but you do get to see significant changes in the pattern of albedo markings. We tend to forget about them now, being so focussed on boulders and layering. It would be possible to make maps like these for every opposition since about 1840 - that would make an amazing animation!

Phil

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Great comparison presentation, Phil. Very easy to compare the albedo features mapped by each team.

I do want to point out that the Mariner 9 map was prepared with far greater contrast than the other two maps, which attempt to present realistic-to-the-eye contrast levels. So it's easier to compare features between the Viking and MGS maps. Variations between the Mariner 9 map and the other two maps seem just as likely to be artifacts of the preparation as they are actual changes over time.

Also, I think it bears mentioning that Viking and MGS overflew the terrain at different times of day nadir LST. IIRC, MGS flew over terrain which, at nadir, was at roughly 2pm LST, and I believe Viking had a couple of different windows (with the two different orbiters) but saw nadir at generally lower sun angles (I want to say between 3 and 4 pm LST, but I just can't remember with confidence... *sigh*... ).

We all know albedo features can vary somewhat by sun angle, so at least some of the variations between the Viking and MGS maps may be due to different sun angles.

However, all of that said, there are obviously places where large gross changes (and also small, subtle changes) have occurred in the times between the three eras. And that is very definitely fascinating. Plus, I seem to recall that some people already have done analyses of albedo variations in telescopic images/drawings from oppositions since, oh, probably 1840....

In fact, I remember reading a book when I was a kid that presented Mars images from several successive oppositions, comparing the albedo features and noting observed changes. It might make a good thesis for some astrogeology postgrad out there to pull up all those old telescopic analyses and plug them into the patterns of changes we've seen from our orbiters from 1971 to present...

-the other Doug

Very true, Doug. The top image was produced in a very different way. While the other two are spacecraft data, albeit manipulated, the top one is a drawing. It exaggerates small details more than the other two, and is more contrasty. My intention is to show surface changes, and it does do that well - look around Isidis and Elysium, or north of Tharsis, especially.

Actually I had another reason for making these. I'm preparing a set of maps to serve as base maps for my Mars atlas. As I go through the history of Mars exploration the base map I use will evolve to follow the growth of our knowledge, and then the changing appearance of the planet. Step 1 is the old ACIC map, pre-Mariner 4, with canals. They have to be converted to Simple Cylindrical so my software can reproject them into the azimuthal projection I will actually use in the book.

Phil

I have a set going back to I think the 1890s...If I can find it I will post it (that is a big if).

Ted

Hi Don,

Mapping is an ancient art, and I'm a great fan of relief shading (my Dad's ancient cloth map of the UK's Lake District is a joy to behold). It's a shame that the technique's fallen out of popularity.

AndyG

Speaking of ancient art... here's a map of Mars made from the Mariner 6 far encounter images.

Phil

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... and here's Mars seen by Mariner 7, far encounter only. It took a better set of images than Mariner 6. Next step - add the near encounter frames.

Phil

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Very cool. Mars comes in to focus. Thanks for posting these.

Does the shape of Mars and the variety of mapping conventions that have been used over the years cause problems with geographic features appearing to shift from one mission to the next? (Obviously, it's not the geographic features shifting, just the coordinate systems we use to represent them...)

--Emily

Not really - shifts between these mariner maps, and between them and the later maps I posted, are partly caused by registration errors (mariner 7 here is more carefully done than mariner 6 was), and partly by albedo boundary shifts - Syrtis Major especially has changed a lot.

Phil

The main problem other than registration errors has been the various redefinitions of W0 and to a lesser extent, the IAU spheroid. See http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Teams/Geomati...esy/P22D-06.pdf

Hopefully we are now past these problems, at least at the 100-meter scale.

Here is a comparison between a MOC wide-angle mosaic - courtesy of Malin Space Science Systems - and a reprojected version of Mariner 4 frame 1. I can't recall seeing this frame matched to topography before (correct me if I'm wrong). At the time I think people said many features were likely atmospheric rather than on the surface, but this comparison shows a very close match even to the smallest bright spots on the surface. It also suggests only the most trivial changes have occurred in this area. Orcus Patera at bottom right gives the location. Blinking the two halves reinforces the close match.

Phil

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This is Mars as it was known just after the Mariner 6 flyby. The background is Mariner 6 far encounter frames, except the north pole which is filled in with a USAF map based on telescopic data. Superimposed on that are the Mariner 4 images (left hemisphere) and Mariner 6's near encounter frames (right side).

Phil

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This is a nice poster: Mariner IV Mars flyby 1965

It's a very nice poster, but the locations of the first few images are based on predictions, not feature mapping, and they are not very reliable. The inset at lower left shows the area of image no. 3. It suggests that this was the first one for which surface features could be identified. My post above in this thread shows that even image 1 reveals actual surface features, but they were not recognized at the time.

(sorry, Tayfun!)

Phil

As far as I remember it was based on a figure from a very old article by Leighton, if I can find the original file I will update the poster.

Don't worry, you didn't do it incorrectly, it was your source that was wrong. The original image location predictions are a bit off.

Phil

Here's the very beginning of Mars cartography. Who drew the first map of Mars? It wasn't Beer and Madler, as most sources seem to assume. It was William Herschel, in 1783. This is his map, compared with a map drawn in 1962 by the U. S. Air Force for NASA.

Herschel drew Mars over several weeks, observing all longitudes eventually. The small south polar cap was visible in every drawing. He conceived the idea of arranging the full disk images like flower petals, using the polar cap as a fixed central point, so he could see the global distribution of dark markings. In my illustration, his map (labelled A) shows that pattern, with an overlay of circles indicating the individual views which made up his set of observations. In his original, each circle is labelled with the date of observation. Map B is the USAF MEC-1 Prototype made by the Aeronautical Chart and Information Center in 1962 for NASA's Mars mission planning. I have removed the grid and placenames and reprojected it to match the south polar projection of Herschel's map.

The shape of Sinus Meridiani and Sinus Sabaeus at left will be familiar to Mars viewers. The bulge above it is Syrtis Major, not as pointed as in the USAF map, and the triangle at the bottom is probably Lunae Lacus, or a confused combination of that and Margaritifer Sinus. The hook shape at the top is Thoth-Nepenthes.

Phil

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Excellent work! I have worked with a lot of these images, but making a map like this is out of my league!

This makes sense, based on my mosaic of the first four frames.

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Here is my complete set of two frame mosaics....the image in the lower right hand corner is a telescopic view of the area taken around the time of the flyby.
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I posted a map showing Mars as it was known after the Mariner 6 flyby, a bit earlier. Here's the post-Mariner 7 version. A slight misregistration of the Mariner 6 near encounter mosaic has been corrected here.

Phil

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Main results current and history cartography Mars

http://www.planetary.brown.edu/pdfs/3416.pdf
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008AGUFM.P31D..04E
ftp://ftp.lpi.usra.edu/pub/outgoing/lpsc2009/full626.pdf

Mariner-9 (1971-1972) 85% 1-2 km 7329 picture
Viking-1,2 (1976-1978) 97% 300 m 51539 picture
MGS (1999-2006) 100% 225m 93893+32414 picture
3% 1.4-12m 85859 picture
Mars Odyssey (2001-2006) 19% <20 m 35% <50 m
Mars Express (2003-2008) 50% 15 m 100% 30 m
Mars Reconnaissance orbiter (2006-2008) 38% 6 m
0.6% 0.25-1.2 m 9549 picture


My prediction future for 2015
Mars Express - 15 metres resolution 3D color global map Mars
Mars Reconnaissance orbiter - 6 metres resolution monochrome global map Mars
MGS+MEX+MRO 0.25-2.5 metres resolution 10% map Mars

You can scrap MEX from your last line. It can't produced imagery at 2.5m/pixel - the SRC channel that it has is out of focus, so it's best imagery is basically the HRSC Nadir Channel.

Also - at 0.6% in 2 years - a further 6 years will allow MRO to have mapped a further 1.8% - for a total of 2.4% at <2.5m res. Add on MGS's 3% (not all of which is < 2.5m/pixel). That's 5.4%.

Where are you getting 10% from?

It would take MRO 20+ years to get to that figure.

10% were not precise calculations, but just at random assumption

The future can be better than plans!

Example

http://www.planetary.brown.edu/pdfs/3416.pdf
Context camera (CTX) Planned: 15% (R=6m/px)

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008AGUFM.P31D..04E
As of 31 August 2008, 36% of Mars was imaged at 6 m/pixel and 10.8% was covered more than once.

Here is a very unusual Mars map - in two different projections. If anybody can identify its source* I'll give them a virtual Mars Bar. Answer next week...

Phil

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* I mean its original source - it didn't look exactly like this originally, I have made changes.

Schiaparelli? Wasn't my first guess. Lowell was.

No, but from the same period as Schiaparelli - even the same opposition as the famous one that resulted in canali and satellites, I think.

Phil

WAG based on a half-memory: Herschel?

You Doofus! No... He was 100 years before the opposition I just mentioned.

Phil

...sorry, haven't been drinking enough lately!

Hi Phil:

I think this might be Dawes' work.

If I recall correctly, he was an English astronomer in the mid-19th century, and he named all the continents and seas he observed on Mars. Places like "Dawes' Continent", and "Dawes' Ocean"...

Simon

Hmm. Flammarion? Looks similar, but different.

Asaph Hall?

Simon is close... but Dawes was the observer, not the cartographer.

Phil

Proctor, then? I wouldn't have guessed that.

Excellent - now we have the cartographer, Richard Proctor. All we need now for the unveiling of the great Mars Bar is the publication. Who can track that down?

Proctor was criticised quite correctly for naming too many things after Dawes - including Dawes' Forked Bay, which was Schiaparelli's Sinus Meridiani. So he revised his naming scheme. And look at the map... where Schiaparelli had 'canali', he has rivers!

Phil

Did these guys know how large Mars was? Would have been some wide rivers.

Okay, an attempt at redemption: Proctor's Other Worlds Than Ours, 1870.

No, the 'Other Worlds' map was his first, the one with the flawed nomenclature.

"Did these guys know how large Mars was? Would have been some wide rivers. "
Not really - lines are not usually drawn with width to scale - look at the width of a highway on a road map of a continent.


Phil

Yeah. And I'm not saying they didn't lack the skepticism to consider that linear features could be lots of other things. It's just that when you look at a globe of the earth, and imagine it through a telescope, you won't see rivers. It would have been interesting to wonder what they expected Earth's albedo features to be. Were they expecting Amazon and Nile or even Red Sea in amongst water, brown land, green land, ice, and clouds?

Might actually be interesting to get a few photos of Mars at opposition through similar or antique telescopes and say, this is about what they were looking at. Granted, the eyeball is a little better than a photo.

But you may see a band of enhanced vegetation along them.

Right - the fertile Nile Valley is much wider than the river and shows up clearly against its dry surroundings. The supposed canals were also thought to be surrounded by irrigated land - the canal itself would have been invisible, they all accepted that.

Proctor and others at the time thought Mars was reasonably Earthlike. Lowell had given up on oceans, but Proctor had not. Rivers were a perfectly sensible interpretation of the faint and barely glimpsed markings. More sensible than canals, really.

Phil

Those maps are interesting from an historical aspect. It's a nice tour down memory lane.

My interest is mainly concentrated on real surface features of Mars and what they tell us about geologic history. Given that Block Island proves a much thicker atmosphere on Mars in the distant past, what does that tell us about the prospects for ice and water related surface features?

Most everything I've been reading lately suggest enormous reservoirs of water ice just underneath the surface of large tracts in many vastly different latitudes of Mars. The more that is found, the more that this suggests there must have been large glacial fields on Mars at one time in the very distant past. Occam's razor tells us that water or ice related processes cannot be logically ignored - as so often has been done in the past.

Here's the answer to my map question - the map was published here:

Proctor, R. A., 1888. Maps and Views of Mars. Scientific American, supplement, v. 26, July-December 1888, pp. 10659-10660.

It seems that the map is not very well known. The earlier map from 'Other Worlds than Ours' is well known but has different names for many features. I'm assuming I can post this pic of the original as it's 120 years old. For my illustration I reprojected it to match the division into hemispheres that I am using elsewhere.

Phil

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Snow on the poles. I think he can be quite proud of that in 1888