If Mars Were on Earth

This image of the surface of Mars was released last Spring as part of the Atlas of Mars. Images were compiled from the Emirates Mars Mission "Hope", an approximately two year mission in that began orbiting the planet in 2021.

via New York Times

 Some remarkably detailed images and maps have been created, including this one showing topography.

via New York Times

A zoom in on this shows that there are lines of latitude and longitude.

From the above image you can see that Olympus Mons, the highest point on Mars is located at around 18 degrees north. This got me thinking about where these features would be placed on Earth so I projected the map.

The first version of this map was better but my computer mangled it. This recovered image is a bit warped but you get the general idea. The large volcanic mountains hover in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico. The other most prominent feature, the Hellas Planitia, a giant impact crater would be just north of Antarctica. 

Keep in mind the longitude is an artificial construct. Latitude is based on a planet's center of rotation but longitude starts where a society chooses it to start. On Earth, a bias towards England has won the day. On Mars someone made a decision about the center of longitude (I have not been able to find out how that was determined yet) and there it is. In other words Olympus Mons could be anywhere on the 18 degree north latitude. Puebla, south of Mexico City, near San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the Sahara Desert or southern India.

I tried a similar and maybe more successful approach with the first image here. I could not find what projection was used so I just projected it onto a world map with a Mollweide projection, which seems close to what was used.

I manipulated the image after the fact to make the countries white instead of black. This created an unintentional yarn-like effect that I really like,

reminding me of this 30 Day Map Challenge Map I made in 2022.

This projection had the effect of moving all the features closer together so that the big volcanoes are further east, closer to the coast of Mexico, 

while the Hellas Planitia is further west, closer to Madagascar.

Useless exercise? Maybe, but it was fun to work on and somewhat informative.

A Medieval Map of Mars

Eleanor Lutz created this wonderful medieval style topographic map of Mars.

Details can be found on her blog, Tabletop Whale. The medieval look is enhanced by the the text, font choices, and cute addition of "Here there be robots" to the title. The more modern looking landing sites detract from that look a bit, however.

 Some notes from her site:

To add a little something extra, I included the history of each place name on the map. Martian craters are named after famous scientists (for large craters) or small villages on Earth (small craters). Since the base map is hand-drawn I also added an overlay of actual NASA topographic imagery. This way even if some of my lines are a little off, you can still see what the actual ground looks like underneath.

The map is partially based on this wonderful USGS topographic map (click warning-huge image, will load slowly)

The USGS map uses the Mercator projection to show the areas between 57 degrees north and south and has separate polar projections for each polar region. Lutz's map covers the same Mercator north-south region but for some reason shows only the areas between 50 degrees east and west, a vertical slice of the above image.

The Mercator projection means that the equatorial craters are drastically undersized compared to those at the higher latitudes. Nobody lives there as far as we (or David Bowie) know so hopefully the Greenland Problem does not offend too many people but its still good to be aware of it.