Google.com Mars Mapped

c/o www.google/mars About Page:

Percival Lowell's map of the western hemisphere of Mars

This map of Mars, published by Percival Lowell in 1895, was the result of many years spent carefully studying the Red Planet through his telescope. Now you can do the same through your web browser. In collaboration with NASA researchers at Arizona State University, we've created some of the most detailed scientific maps of Mars ever made.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What am I looking at?
2. Why isn't the visible map in color?
3. What are the gold colored pieces on the thermal map? Is that color real?
4. Can I see the Mars data using the Google Earth client?
5. How do I find out more about this data, or Mars in general?
6. I have another question or comment. Where can I send feedback?

1. What am I looking at?

We've included three different types of data in Google Mars:

• Elevation - A shaded relief map, generated with data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. This map is color-coded by altitude, so you can use the color key at the lower left to estimate elevations.
• Visible - A mosaic of images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. MOC is like the digital camera you have at home. Basically, this is what your eyes would see if you were in orbit around Mars.
• Infrared - A mosaic of infrared images taken by the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft. Warmer areas appear brighter, and colder areas are darker. Clouds and dust in the atmosphere are transparent in the infrared, making this the sharpest global map of Mars that's ever been made.

2. Why isn't the visible map in color?

In true color, Mars pretty much looks like butterscotch. We chose a gray-scale map in order to highlight more surface details.

3. What are the gold colored pieces on the infrared map? Is that color real?

Those are areas where we've hand-built higher resolution mosaics and superimposed them on the global image. The infrared data is all from wavelengths humans can't even see, so it's always false color. We've chosen a golden tint because it looks good and makes the high-resolution images stand out nicely.

4. Can I see the Mars data using the Google Earth client?

Not yet, but we're working on it. To whet your appetite, you can check out this 3-D fly-through movie of Valles Marineris made using this data.

5. How do I find out more about this data, or Mars in general?

You can learn more about these images on the JMARS data distribution page. To learn more about Mars in general, you might start with the NASA Mars Missions home page. There's also a pretty good search engine that could aid you in your quest. ;)

6. I have another question or comment. Where can I send feedback?

If you have comments or questions about Google Mars, we'd love to hear them. Please write to us at labs+googlemars@google.com.

The scenes in this imaginary flight come from a movie by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Digital Image Animation Laboratory. The movie uses the most detailed mosaic image ever made of Valles Marineris.

This image was assembled at Arizona State University's Mars Space flight Facility from more than 500 individual photos taken by the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

NOTES
The Grandest Canyon of all isn't on Earth, it's on the planet Mars - Valles Marineris, or Mariner Valley.

This canyon is so long it could stretch 3,000 miles from New York City to Los Angeles, and it's nearly as deep as Mt. Everest is high

Watch the Movie
Watch on Google Video (low bandwidth)
MPEG1 (872x540: 56MB)
bittorrent
download
Windows Video (960x540: 122MB)
download
Quicktime H.264 (Coming soon!)
Quicktime MPEG4 (Coming soon!)





o and if you only check one thing in this post this should be it.