the height data from the SAR footprints closely match the black and white imaging data on a large scale
and seeing as there is no shadowing in the images i used that map( not the new colored map above) as a base to make a normal map

there is a tool for celestia that correctly maps the normals to a sphere ( called "nms" )
but more on that is for the image processing forum

That's as much explanation as I was hoping for, much appreciated. The results are beautiful and entirely plausible.

Thanks a lot JohnVV.
Your renderings are very nice indeed and make Titan looks like a planet taken from our sci-fi TV series of the 60's or 70's (Star Trek and Space : 1999)

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

I have made an impressionist map of a segment of the T8 radar swath including several of the mountains ridges of central Adiri. The topography is greatly exaggerated for illustrative purposes.

https://www.astro.rug.nl/~oberg/central_adiri.jpg

I used the following sources to help inform the illustration:

- Jason Perry's Titan RADAR SAR Swath's website
- Ian Regan's ISS global map
- Lopes et al. 2019 "A global geomorphologic map of Saturn’s moon Titan"
- Radebaugh et al. 2007 "Mountains on Titan Observed by Cassini Radar"
- Liu et al. 2015 "The tectonics of Titan: Global structural mapping from Cassini RADAR"

Please let me know if anything goes too far beyond artistic liberties and could stand to be corrected.

- Nick Oberg

That's a beautiful piece of work. I hope we will see more!

Phil

The style of this map reminds me of Middle-earth.

Yes, but are there right angles?

Nice!

Some of the context links:

https://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~perry/RADA...8_v00.part2.jpg (relevant swath)
https://data.caltech.edu/tindfiles/serve/30...7-0563faefd247/ (global with labels)

That piece about the mountains of Middle Earth doesn't hold up when you look beyond the Americas. Check out Siberia, Iran. the vast region north of India, not to mention the Balkans. As a Tolkien fan from long ago and far away, I don't have a problem with his map...or Titan's mountains. Or especially this new map.

Phil

What an outstanding work of visualization! Great outreach tool, too. Very, very impressive, Nick.

That's stunning, Nick!

Hey, I don't know if any of you remember me but, I used to drop by once in a while asking for stuff like "reprojected maps of Io" etc.
That was back when I had a weaker computer and Google Earth didn't allow maps to cross the international dateline. Ever since then, I have got a better computer and after the lockdown began, I had time to to update my collection of maps and the Google Earth Solar System overlay. I noticed that there was no updated map combining the ISS map with the HiSAR map but I found some separate ones in USGS Astrogeology. What I did was I got the ISS and HiSAR maps and combined them into one map. Then I added color from the Huygens lander images to the whole globe. The image is 16K so it is suitable for both Google Earth and Celestia.
I didn't do any fancy stuff and the noise from the original USGS maps are still there but it was something I wanted to do since the only map combining HiSAR with ISS was from T71 (July 2010) and it's only 11K B/W.
The map is up to date as of T104 (January 2015)
Here s a link to the full size version. (16K)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/60012030@N02/...eposted-public/
(2K thumbnail)

How could we forget? Many thanks for making and sharing that. New Titan map products are always welcome.

Very nice to see this Antdoghalo. I wonder how it might look if the radar component is overlain on the ISS-based map from Ian Regan?

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=240167

https://www.flickr.com/photos/10795027@N08/43023455582/

This was mainly an experimental thing I did (I didn't think my computer was able to even work on it. It took 20 minutes to complete each task of the process over a few hours but the computer pulled through like the little engine that could). I have since noticed there are some other planetary objects where lower resolution data from older spacecraft could be used to fill in unmapped areas like Phoebe, Charon, and Pluto (which you did a good job adding, Albers). One thing I hope eventually does happen is a map gets released showing radar coverage up to T126 in spring 2017, only then can we have the ultimate updated map of Titan until another probe visits.

I could take a shot at combining Ian's map with the USGS radar map later on this summer.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/60012030@N02/...eposted-public/
Well, I combined them and the shading is a disaster between the two maps. While it is nice to have increased resolution (and see a couple more of the North Polar lakes,) its so bad I wonder if simply inverting the brightness would actually make it look better. My computer was barely able to make this hulking monstrosity after a couple crashes with GIMP. Someone with a much stronger computer would have to dedicate a lot of time to eliminating the brightness inconsistencies.

I've tried to look for an updated RADAR map up to T126 prior to mission's end but I cannot find one. The later swaths not included in this one cover a lot of the unmapped areas.

I don't think inverting the brightness is the solution. Making the radar layer partially transparent (50%, or varied a bit to see how 40 and 60 look) might be a better option.

Phil

Click to view attachment
My take at the map in question....There is ISS base overlaid by radar data up to T-104 and false-colored by VIMS data...Can post bigger one in pdf if there is interest...

Close up of the Selk crater area and a bluish render of the Kraken Sea.....

Click to view attachment
Selk crater at the highest resolution.....

Here is a near perfect version. (2K thumb of 16K image)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/60012030@N02/...eposted-public/

While making a map of Mars, I discovered a tool in GIMP that was perfect for this. Now it looks like a normal ISS map at first glance but upon zooming in, one would find this map holds a LOT of surprises!!!
BTW, nice color maps Kymani

Indeed - great to see the surprises!

Recently I have tried to put together an informed but decidedly artistic depiction of the topography of Mayda Insula.

I have used as a basis the relatively low resolution DEM derived from Cassini RADAR stereogrammetry from Kirk et al. 2008. This has been modified to trace apparent dissection of the terrain visible in the T25 and T28 RADAR swaths, as well as the beautifully processed version made available here by Ian. Finally this has been loosely verified by iteratively illuminating the resulting DEM and comparing it with the radar image to try to by-eye match highlights and shadows resulting from the topography. Finally I have convolved the DEM with a gaussian kernel to ensure it is still largely in agreement with the original Kirk et al. elevation model.

All in all it is far from perfect, but it was an interesting exercise and hopefully you will enjoy the result. I include a top-down view of the DEM, an animated gif comparing my illuminated DEM and the RADAR image, and an oblique perspective view of the island (or peninsula, seems hard to find anyone certain about this) with exaggerated elevation.

Very nice, thanks for posting.

I just found this interesting article on the topography of another special place - the Huygens landing site:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi...29/2020EA001127

Made a 32K version of my previous Titan map. The sand dunes and individual valleys are easily visible
https://www.flickr.com/photos/60012030@N02/...157717516744806


Now if only the USGS would release a HISAR map with the last 2 years of swaths that would be great.

Thanks for your great ISS-SAR composite Titan map Antdoghalo! It has been a while since I viewed the Titan blog and I am humbled by the advancement made in Titan mapping!

As I realized an update from USGS won't be arriving anytime soon, I proceeded to create my own version of SAR map for flybys 108, 113, 120, 121 from BIDRs.
It was a steep learning curve working with this dataset at the beginning, with some details of the process still eluding me, but in the end all the pieces fell into their right places
and a little more of the Titan's surface got revealed. Here is a result, down-sampled to fit in here. VIMS map is at the bottom, overlayed by transparent USGS SAR map to T104 and finally
T108-121 coverage on top in B&W.

Click to view attachment