TOPOGRAPHIC CONTOUR MAPS OF MARS

Additional Details

Description

TOPOGRAPHIC AND COLOR-CODED CONTOUR MAPS OF MARS

The newest map of Mars from the US Geological Survey (USGS), Geologic Investigations Series I-2782, is a two-sheet set containing a topographic version of Mars, and a color-coded contour map of the planet. The landing sites of the recent Mars Exploration Rovers A (Spirit) and B (Opportunity) can be located on the topographic map. Also, the landing sites of previous Viking and Pathfinder missions are marked on the map.

The map was prepared on behalf of the Planetary Geology and Geophysics Program, Solar System Exploration Division, Office of Space Science, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It is based on data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA), an instrument on NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft. The image used for the base of this map represents more than 600 million measurements gathered between 1999 and 2001, adjusted for consistency between 2001 and 2003, and converted to planetary radii.

To create the topographic base image, the original Digital Elevation Model (DEM) produced by the MOLA team in Simple Cylindrical projection was projected into the Mercator and Polar Stereographic pieces. A shaded relief was generated from each DEM. Illumination is from the west, which follows a long-standing USGS tradition for planetary maps. This allows for continuity in the shading between maps and quadrangles, and most closely resembles lighting conditions found on imagery. The DEM values were then mapped to a smooth global color look-up table.

These two files were merged and scaled to 1:25 million for the Mercator projection portion and 1:15,196,708 for the two Polar Stereographic portions, with a resolution of 300 dots per inch. The projections have a common scale of 1:13,923,113 at +56 degrees latitude. Each map measures 36# x 32#.

Survey Date

2003

Print Date

2003

Boundary Type

Planetary

Two Sided

No

Pieces

2

Languages

English