Astronomy

The Dione Atlas
Cassini’s imaging team has released an atlas of Saturn’s moon Dione. The atlas is available as a set of 15 PDF files at a scale of 1:1,000,000. Via Bad Astronomy and Universe Today. This is the third atlas of… »
Posted on Sunday, May 25, 2008 at 11:50 AM
Categories: Astronomy
WorldWide Telescope Reviews
Ogle Earth’s Stefan Geens, normally a (fellow) Mac user, borrows a Windows machine for his in-depth review of WorldWide Telescope: “My initial impression stands: WWT is a wonderful piece of software that excels at rendering Earth’s view of the universe… »
Posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 at 9:36 PM
Categories: Astronomy, Software
WorldWide Telescope Now Available
Apparently, “by the end of the month” means something a little sooner — i.e., right now: WorldWide Telescope is now available for download. See coverage from Astronomy, Sky and Telescope and Virtual Earth, an Evangelist’s Blog. It’s a beta (probably… »
Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 at 7:56 AM
Categories: Astronomy, Software
WorldWide Telescope This Month?
Digital Earth Blog notes reports that Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope may be released by the end of this month — or at least Bill Gates has been quoted saying that it will. I’ll be very interested to know the system requirements…. »
Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 at 7:32 AM
Categories: Astronomy, Software
First Map of an Extrasolar Planet
Astronomers have produced the first map of a planet outside the solar system. The resolution is admittedly low — all we know is that there’s a “hot spot” offset from the planetary noon by some thirty degrees — but what… »
Posted on Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 11:11 AM
Categories: Astronomy
Schiaparelli’s Maps of Mars
Until Mariner 4 photographed craters on Mars in 1965, Earth-bound telescopes were the only way to map the red planet. BibliOdyssey looks at Schiaparelli’s 19th-century maps of Mars, which gave rise to the idea that canals — canali or… »
Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 7:28 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Astronomy
Kaguya’s Lunar Topo Maps
JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, has announced a lunar map generated by the Kaguya (Selene) probe: “Using the Laser Altimeter (LALT) aboard the Lunar Explorer KAGUYA, JAXA acquired data covering the entire Moon’s surface and produced a topographical… »
Posted on Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 8:59 PM
Categories: Astronomy
Topography of Titan
The Planetary Society Blog reports: On Monday, with no fanfare, JPL posted the first detailed topographic map of part of Titan. I suppose the map doesn’t strictly qualify as a pretty picture, but it is a tremendously important data… »
Posted on Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 7:50 AM
Categories: Astronomy
A Map of Dione and a Planetary Gazetteer
The Planetary Society’s blog reports that the International Astronomical Union has approved new names for features on Saturn’s moon Dione, and provides an equatorial map with the new names added to spaceprobe imagery. But what also caught my attention… »
Posted on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 9:00 PM
Categories: Astronomy, Toponyms
Google Sky on the Web
I suppose a web-based standalone version of Google Sky was inevitable, once the Google Maps API supported it, and now it’s here. Highlights include infrared, microwave and historical-map layers with opacity controls and a series of image collections from… »
Posted on Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 9:10 PM
Categories: Astronomy, Online Maps
Google Maps Astronomy Mashups?
Mike Pegg notes that despite the fact that it’s been a few months since the Google Maps API supported Moon, Mars and Sky, “we have not been inundated with Google Maps mash-ups that have taken advantage of these new astronomical… »
Posted on Sunday, March 9, 2008 at 3:50 PM
Categories: Astronomy, Hacks & Mashups
Reactions to WorldWide Telescope
To begin with, here is the video of the TED talk introducing WorldWide Telescope: Reactions, many of which make explicit comparisons to Google Sky: Bad Astronomy: “This does look very cool. It’s much like Google Sky, but from Microsoft’s direction…. »
Posted on Monday, March 3, 2008 at 1:39 PM
Categories: Astronomy, Software
Mapping the Moon’s South Pole
The Moon’s polar regions are not easily observed from the Earth (or from non-polar Lunar orbit), but NASA has obtained high-resolution radar maps of the Moon’s south pole by using the Goldstone Solar System Radar in the Mojave Desert. The… »
Posted on Saturday, March 1, 2008 at 8:38 AM
Categories: Astronomy
WorldWide Telescope Announced
Microsoft gave a demonstration today of its forthcoming WorldWide Telescope application, the site for which is now online, but we still don’t have very much hard information about it. A lot of reactions. Robert Scoble, who when he saw a… »
Posted on Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 8:54 PM
Categories: Astronomy, Software
‘Extraterrestrial Islands in a Methane Sea’
Since, as you know, I’m deeply interested in the mapping of the other planets and moons of the solar system, I was very much interested in two recent posts by Peter Minton, in which he takes Cassini imagery of… »
Posted on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 11:15 AM
Categories: Astronomy
Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope
Microsoft will be launching a competitor to Google Earth’s Sky feature, called “WorldWide Telescope,” on February 27, TechCrunch reports. The downloadable desktop software is claimed to be “significantly better” than either Google Earth or Stellarium in terms of data and… »
Posted on Tuesday, February 19, 2008 at 3:40 PM
Categories: Astronomy, Software
Google Sky Lawsuit
A contractor is suing Google for allegedly stealing the idea for Google Earth’s Sky feature. Stefan argues that the lawsuit is “demonstrably frivolous,” citing evidence that the contractor was not the first person to moot the idea. From my perspective,… »
Posted on Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 10:13 PM
Categories: Astronomy, Google Earth
‘Mapping the Universe’ at the Adler Planetarium
The Festival of Maps continues to ripple through the media: yesterday’s New York Times carried a review of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, focusing on the remarkable Atwood sphere, which predated more modern planetarium projectors, and the Mapping the Universe… »
Posted on Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 6:39 AM
Categories: Astronomy, Chicago Festival of Maps
Light Pollution Maps
Light pollution is the bane of astronomers worldwide. Cities generate so much light that their glow can be seen from great distances; that sky glow interferes with astronomical observations, reducing what can be seen, both with the naked eye and… »
Posted on Sunday, February 3, 2008 at 11:46 AM
Categories: Astronomy, Google Earth
Iapetus
The Cassini-Huygens mission’s map of Iapetus — one of Saturn’s moons — has been updated to reflect the exciting (to us astronomy geeks) images taken during Cassini’s flyby of the moon last September. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.) Via… »
Posted on Friday, February 1, 2008 at 9:00 AM
Categories: Astronomy
Google Sky Updated, API Supports Astronomy Layers
I still find the Google Sky interface less appealing than some dedicated planetarium software I’ve tried, but I’m still interested in the most recent updates, including, among other things, imagery from space-based telescopes and imagery layers from 17th-century celestial… »
Posted on Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 9:56 AM
Categories: Astronomy, Google Earth, Hacks & Mashups
Mapping the Solar System: Mercury and Titan
It wasn’t so long ago that our world maps had parts that were either left empty or left to conjecture. “Here be dragons.” We haven’t had to worry about unmapped, unknown parts of the Earth — terra incognita — for… »
Posted on Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 12:24 PM
Categories: Astronomy
Google Moon Updated
One of the most common questions from beginning amateur astronomers is whether you can see the Apollo landing sites on the moon through a telescope. You can’t. You can, however, see detailed layers for the Apollo moon missions on Google… »
Posted on Sunday, September 16, 2007 at 8:28 PM
Categories: Astronomy
Sky in Google Earth
Google Earth 4.2 was released overnight. Perhaps you’ve heard about one of its new features — and I don’t mean support for KML 2.2. Sky in Google Earth: click on the Sky button and the program transforms itself from an… »
Posted on Wednesday, August 22, 2007 at 7:09 PM
Categories: Astronomy, Google Earth
Mars HiRISE Images
If you also like satellite images of other planets, proceed immediately to the home page of the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter: “During its mission, HiRISE will collect thousands of images of the Martian surface, covering only… »
Posted on Sunday, July 22, 2007 at 9:07 PM
Categories: Astronomy, Satellite & Aerial
Topo Maps of Mars
It’s a bit presumptuous to call them “hiker’s maps,” as the European Space Agency does in its announcement, but the Mars Express scientists have generated several sample topographic maps of the Iani Chaos region of Mars, in an exercise… »
Posted on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 12:00 AM
Categories: Astronomy, Topo Maps & Trails
A Book Roundup
Much book-related news has been accumulating over here; past time I shared it. Surveying, Mapping and GIS reviews Dava Sobel’s Longitude, a book about John Harrison, who discovered how to determine longitude. I think I need to read this book…. »
Posted on Tuesday, January 23, 2007 at 2:57 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Astronomy, Books, Cartography, Google Earth, Historical Maps
The U.S. Naval Observatory’s Celestial Atlases
Highlights of this page about the collection of the U.S. Naval Observatory include scans from several celestial atlases, including Bayer’s Uranometria (1661), Flamsteed’s Atlas céleste (1774), and Jamieson’s Celestial Atlas (1822). Via MetaFilter…. »
Posted on Friday, July 14, 2006 at 3:23 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Astronomy
Barnard’s Stars
Edward Emerson Barnard’s posthumous 1927 work, A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way, has been digitized in its entirety and put on the web by Georgia Tech; here is the web site. Browsable by region and searchable;… »
Posted on Wednesday, May 31, 2006 at 9:36 AM
Categories: Astronomy
Huygens Probe Images of Titan
Images of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, taken by the Huygens probe during its descent through Titan’s atmosphere last year, have been released. Mercator projection and stereographic versions have also been made, which makes them maps of a sort. More… »
Posted on Wednesday, May 10, 2006 at 11:35 AM
Categories: Astronomy
Historical Celestial Atlases on the Web
If you’re interested in antique celestial atlases, you’ll want to bookmark Historical Celestial Atlases on the Web, which provides links to a number of online reproductions of old star atlases. Via La Cartoteca. See previous entries: The Face of the… »
Posted on Friday, April 28, 2006 at 12:40 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Astronomy
Maps of Jupiter
NASA has released maps of Jupiter based on images taken by the Cassini-Huygens probe as it passed by the planet in 2000. Cylindrical and north and south polar projections are available. More from the BBC. Via Slashgeo and La… »
Posted on Thursday, March 30, 2006 at 1:25 PM
Categories: Astronomy
Google Mars
Google Mars: in the same vein as Google Moon (see previous entry); with visual-spectrum, infrared and elevation imagery. Here’s Google’s FAQ. Via Cartography, amongst many others. (Update: Announcement on the Google Blog.) Also, as Stefan notes, a Mars layer is… »
Posted on Monday, March 13, 2006 at 10:16 AM
Categories: Astronomy, Google Earth
USGS Astrogeology Research Program
Via La Cartoteca, I discover images and maps from the USGS’s Astrogeology Research Program: a collection of imagery, GIS data, and map products (e.g., globes for sale) for other planets and moons from our Solar System…. »
Posted on Thursday, March 2, 2006 at 8:35 PM
Categories: Astronomy
Google and NASA
The big news this week for Google watchers this week is the announcement Wednesday of a memorandum of understanding between Google and NASA’s Ames Research Center. Press releases from ARC and Google; news coverage from the San Jose Mercury News… »
Posted on Friday, September 30, 2005 at 9:30 AM
Categories: Astronomy, Satellite & Aerial
The Full Moon Atlas
The Full Moon Atlas: “A complete series of interactive lunar maps, with more than 2,500 geographic formations (including craters, mountains, lakes, seas and valleys) identified simply by moving your mouse cursor over the feature.” Javascript required; doesn’t work properly in… »
Posted on Tuesday, September 20, 2005 at 11:34 AM
Categories: Astronomy
Map of Pluto
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have generated a colour map of Pluto; it’s a bit of a stretch to call the map “detailed,” but on the other hand it’s rather amazing to have any detail on a map of… »
Posted on Tuesday, September 13, 2005 at 8:17 AM
Categories: Astronomy
Google Moon
In honour of the 36th anniversary of the first moon landing, Google Moon, with a Google Maps interface, NASA imagery, the Apollo landing sites, and a fun gag at maximum zoom (Boing Boing, Google Blog, MetaFilter)…. »
Posted on Wednesday, July 20, 2005 at 7:24 AM
Categories: Astronomy
Comet Machholz
Here are two sky charts that track the path of Comet Machholz, which will be visible to the naked eye for the next couple of months. Via MetaFilter…. »
Posted on Tuesday, January 4, 2005 at 12:44 PM
Categories: Astronomy
More Lunar Maps
Also via Here Be Dragons, another fine digital collection of lunar maps, from the Lunar and Planetary Institute. These maps were made by the USAF in the 1960s — back when the U.S. government had a vested interest in accurate… »
Posted on Friday, July 2, 2004 at 7:08 PM
Categories: Astronomy
Virtual Moon Atlas
Virtual Moon Atlas is free lunar atlas software for Windows; certain functions appear to require OpenGL support (via the Astronomy tribe)…. »
Posted on Monday, April 5, 2004 at 10:42 AM
Categories: Astronomy
The Face of the Moon; Star Atlases
The Cartoonist has discovered the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology in Kansas City, which has quite a bit of stuff on celestial mapping. In addition to an exhibition of rare books and maps called The Face of… »
Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 12:12 PM
Categories: Antique Maps, Astronomy, Exhibitions
Logarithmic Maps of the Universe
These logarithmic maps of the universe measure the distance from the Earth’s core to absolutely everything, from kilometres to megaparsecs, from the mantle to the microwave background of the universe (via Cartographie tribe)…. »
Posted on Tuesday, January 27, 2004 at 8:31 AM
Categories: Astronomy
Lunar Atlases
Lunar Atlases brings together a couple of atlases of the moon and other lunar photography. The atlases are comprised of photographs taken by lunar orbiters rather than traditional atlas maps. The photos are sorted by feature and coordinates, though. Via… »
Posted on Thursday, January 22, 2004 at 9:43 PM
Categories: Astronomy

Note: Entries from 2003 were not categorized and will not appear in the category archives. Please consult the monthly archives.