Airbrushed Maps |
Airbrushed Maps |
Feb 16 2015, 05:56 PM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 289 Joined: 29-December 05 From: Ottawa, ON Member No.: 624 |
I rarely make comments but I am on this site every single day. Though I admire the global mapping efforts made from spacecraft images, I dearly miss the airbrush maps we had in the seventies by J.L. Inge and P.M Bridges. I wish we'd go back to those.
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Feb 16 2015, 06:33 PM
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#2
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10128 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
"I dearly miss the airbrush maps"
Totally agree, they were works of art of the highest order, not just copying photographs but reconciling all available data into one high value graphic. However, as my dear old buddy "This is it" used to say on the construction site I worked on many years ago, " 'Em days is gorn". Well, not quite gorn, but almost. Most people, and certainly those working under the constant high pressure of mission operations, will never have the time to do that now. Only people who can step aside from that world and spend time on the work can make maps like those today. I might mention Ralph Aeschliman as an example. http://ralphaeschliman.com/id22.htm Phil -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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Feb 16 2015, 07:10 PM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2346 Joined: 7-December 12 Member No.: 6780 |
I could never ever do this quality manually.
But it's good to have a quasi-standard as a goal. Retrieving inclination, altitude and albedo/color maps should be feasible, although really hard with OpNav3. Besides naming, these seem to be the basic ingredients for the maps. There should be ways to teach a computer how to combine these ingredients into a nice map. Something interesting to work on. Thanks! |
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Feb 16 2015, 07:40 PM
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#4
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2504 Joined: 13-September 05 Member No.: 497 |
There should be ways to teach a computer how to combine these ingredients into a nice map. I was pretty happy with the merged MOC/MOLA map that went into the 2001 National Geographic map of Mars: http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/pro...nation-mars-map The airbrush maps were works of art but I question if they were objectively better than a modern topography/albedo digital product. -------------------- Disclaimer: This post is based on public information only. Any opinions are my own.
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Feb 16 2015, 07:56 PM
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#5
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Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
Yeah, I think that what made those airbrushed maps so special and different from photographic products is that they represented topography as much as (or more than!) they represented albedo. The shaded-relief MOLA maps are really nice products. Mattias Malmer's 3D modeling work in the Rosetta thread is a fine example of how topographic data is essential to that realistic feel of a map; and the reason Bjorn Jonsson's work on the Dawn Vesta data looks so good is because he's projecting albedo images onto topographic data. I look forward to having the Dawn topographic data set at Ceres that will allow us to make shaded-relief maps. And now I want to see shaded-relief maps of the major moons of the solar system -- I can't recall that I've ever seen anyone produce those.
-------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
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Feb 16 2015, 09:24 PM
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#6
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10128 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
"The airbrush maps were works of art but I question if they were objectively better than a modern topography/albedo digital product."
I don't think they were better than what we have now, but they were far better than the kinds of digital mosaic or map that could have been made in the 1960s and 1970s, when people were working with Lunar Orbiter or Mariner 9 images. Phil -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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Feb 16 2015, 09:36 PM
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#7
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Member Group: Members Posts: 207 Joined: 6-March 07 From: houston, texas Member No.: 1828 |
Digital mapping techniques really took off in the early 1980's. Phil is right in that it wouldn't have been nearly as good, but I think some of it could have been done earlier to some degree but part of it also was that processing power was also much weaker and much more expensive then. The Mariner 9 digital maps were difficult to interpret so airbrush remained viable. the last official airbrush map was Triton, i believe.
-------------------- Dr. Paul Schenk, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston TX
http://stereomoons.blogspot.com; http://www.youtube.com/galsat400; http://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/schenk/ |
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Feb 16 2015, 10:18 PM
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#8
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Member Group: Members Posts: 200 Joined: 20-November 05 From: Mare Desiderii Member No.: 563 |
One of the main reasons I kept my 3rd ed of The New Solar System (Beatty/Chaikin) after getting the 4th was the airbrush maps in the back: as well as planets it has moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus.
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Feb 17 2015, 10:20 PM
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#9
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1578 Joined: 14-October 05 From: Vermont Member No.: 530 |
I rarely make comments but I am on this site every single day. Though I admire the global mapping efforts made from spacecraft images, I dearly miss the airbrush maps we had in the seventies by J.L. Inge and P.M Bridges. I wish we'd go back to those. I feel like I must direct your attention to this post from Machi: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=214485 |
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Feb 17 2015, 10:33 PM
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#10
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Member Group: Members Posts: 909 Joined: 4-September 06 From: Boston Member No.: 1102 |
The genre is alive and doing extremely will with Machi's map... As many said when he posted: Wow!!!!
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Feb 22 2015, 02:06 PM
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#11
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IMG to PNG GOD Group: Moderator Posts: 2250 Joined: 19-February 04 From: Near fire and ice Member No.: 38 |
And now I want to see shaded-relief maps of the major moons of the solar system -- I can't recall that I've ever seen anyone produce those. Luckily shape models/DEMs have become available for several of Saturn's satellites. See http://sbn.psi.edu/pds/archive/shape.html - a true goldmine for anyone interested in shape models. It's simple to produce shaded relief maps from these, the only problem is that of course albedo features will be completely missing. Here is a shaded relief map of Dione produced from the Gaskell shape model: The sun illuminates everything from the west at an elevation angle of 30 degrees. |
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Feb 22 2015, 09:36 PM
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#12
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Member Group: Members Posts: 696 Joined: 3-December 04 From: Boulder, Colorado, USA Member No.: 117 |
For those who are interested, here are a couple of photos that I took at the Voyager 1 Saturn encounter in November 1980, showing Jay Inge (with Pat Bridges and Carl Sagan) making the first airbrush map of Mimas, a day or two after the flyby, using mylar lat/lon grid overlays to locate features.
Sadly, Jay died on April 1st last year. He was a good guy... John |
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Feb 23 2015, 04:01 AM
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#13
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10128 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
Great photos.
The real value of airbrush maps over photomaps or DEMs is that they could be made when we didn't have good photomaps or DEMs. Mariner 9 mapping of Mars is a good example - there is far more information in the USGS airbrush maps than can be got out of the raw photomosaics (most people have never even seen those mosaics) as the images were so difficult to use and topography was almost non-existent. I agree that today's moon and mars maps can be done much better with GIS and modern datasets, but that wasn't true in the 'old days'. And it's not just the old days. I'm contemplating a new map of asteroid 243 Ida. We have great images for a small area of it, maybe 30%, but the rest is so poorly seen that it will be most effectively mapped by artistic shaded relief than by the very poor DEM in the low resolution area. Maybe in the summer... Phil -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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Feb 23 2015, 07:54 PM
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#14
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Member Group: Members Posts: 334 Joined: 11-December 12 From: The home of Corby Crater (Corby-England) Member No.: 6783 |
Great photos indeed!
What an amazing futuristic looking bracelet the artist has on his left wrist. It reminds me of when I try to tell my teenage kids about the difference between computers BCd (before cd) and now, AcD. (Don't get me started on RAM) Quite remarkable things were accomplished with the tech available, many of them (including maps) are still comparable with what is achievable now. |
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Feb 23 2015, 09:02 PM
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#15
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Member Group: Members Posts: 655 Joined: 22-January 06 Member No.: 655 |
Photos as time capsule, these are just sublime!
It's seven minutes past five, and no-one looks like they even want to think about going home. Who has a pair of scissors and a ruler on their desk at JPL these days? Smoking in the office?? Departure-lounge-type TV monitors on the wall Digital wristwatch!! Wonderful, thank you John! Edit: got any more?? |
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