Martian Cartography Options

[centsworth_II]

...It's just that when you look at a globe of the earth, and imagine it through a telescope, you won't see rivers....

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

[Phil Stooke]

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

[MarsIsImportant]

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.

[Phil Stooke]

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

[djellison]

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

[nprev]

Very cool map, thanks for educating (me, at least), Phil!

"Fogland"...interesting. That wouldn't happen to coincide approximately with the Tharsis region, would it?

[elakdawalla]

I like "windy land." Is that Hellas? Appropriate name for the source of planet-encircling dust storms

--Emily

[Phil Stooke]

This original map is south up - mine was north up. So yes, Windy Land is Hellas, but Fog Land is Argyre, not Tharsis!

Phil

[JohnVV]

It's a nice tour down memory lane.

i have 12 maps

CODE

.
|-- marte_1960.png
|-- marte_1988.png
|-- marte_alpo.png
|-- marte_antoniadi_1896.png
|-- marte_antoniadi_1909.png
|-- marte_antoniadi_1930.png
|-- marte_demottoni_1957.png
|-- marte_green_1877.png
|-- marte_lowell_1894.png
|-- marte_maggini_1939.png
|-- marte_schiapparelli_1881_82.png
`-- marte_schiapparelli_1883_84.png

all south up , well the image in the scope is upside down without a Barlow lens .
the 3 oldest
the images are 2048x1024

i was having some fun with them years ago in Celestia back in `03

it is interesting how things have changed over the years . From Edgar Rice Burroughs to " it's like the moon" with Merrier
then to date with "hay there is melting water STILL " shots from mro and hirise

[Phil Stooke]

Here's another oldie but goldie:

The 1783 map by William Herschel, drawn in a south polar azimuthal projection, here reprojected into a cylindrical projection with north up. This was the first map of Mars ever compiled. It's often overlooked because of the unusual projection, but in cylindrical projection it's not bad at all. The big dark-ringed shape at the bottom is the residual south polar cap.

Phil

[JohnVV]

Phil I did not know of that one
from 1783 cool

[Phil Stooke]

Here are a couple of other early maps which I have converted to cylindrical projection for use elsewhere. The Beer and Madler map corrects a mistake in their original. The Green map adds the poles, and in both cases the original grid and text labels have been removed.

Phil

Beer and Madler:


Green:

[Phil Stooke]

I've added an illustration showing five historic maps of Mars, including the three shown above, but all reprojected into a different projection, to my Mars Atlas web page:

http://publish.uwo.ca/~pjstooke/marsatlas.htm

This is from the historical intro part of the book.

Phil

[ElkGroveDan]

Phil I really love the Lunar Book. I can't wait for this one.

[machi]

I did my first map - Martian topography map.
I suppose, that I'll write more info about it tomorrow on my blog.
Map is now available as 9MB jpeg (with equivalent resolution 2 km/pix) and if it'll be okay (all comments are welcome!),
then I want to upload PDF version (which is much more useful, but also much larger - 56 MB):