Celestia Forums

Hi.
I searched in the forum, but I found only older textures (2010), so here are the new Mercury global maps from Messenger mission, issued on Sep 7, 2012:
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/mosaics.html
As you see they range from 2.5 Km/pixel (about 1.5K) to 1 Km/pixel (almost 4K) and the huge 250m/pixel (about 15k map).
I downloaded the large 250m/pixel png one, about 15K and 828 MB, and reduced it to an 8K texture.
Here some results.
As you can see the detail is very variable, some regions are still missing detailed close-ups, but the overall appearance is very nice, in my opinion.
Sorry for the yellowish color, it's a mistake I did and left unchanged to save time , because even if the original image is an RGB, it looks like a greyscale one.
Waiting for the last, future complete release, enjoy.
Obviously click on images to see them full size.
Bye

Goofy

Addendum:
Just curious to have a personal view on the long-aged discussion between people saying that textures not properly scaled (2k- 4k- 8k-16k etc.) must be downscaled, but NEVER upscaled, I used Mercury 250m/pixel .png map for the test.
As I told it's about 15k, so I used the downscaled 8k texture, and the upscaled 16k one.
Here the result.
In my opinion, the right one, upscaled to 16k, is much more detailed amd pleasant than the 8k downscaled one.
Obviously this is a particular case, given the original was almost 15k, so much closer to 16k than to 8k.
This just to say that the rule is not always applicable, so that if the distance from the upper scale is more than let's say 30%, it should be downscaled, otherwise not, like in this example.
Please don't flame, it's just a personal opinion.
What's yours?
Bye

Goofy

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Hi John.
Thanks a lot for the clear explanation about the convenience or not to upscale an image.
BTW, the last available Mercury maps were yours, on 2010.
Did you already know of the latest ones?
If yes, are you doing or will you do something with them?
E.g. VTs?
Bye

Goofy

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Yeah, 8k is really pleasant Are you going to upload it as add-on?

Hi.
Perhaps some of you have not seen it, so here the link to this NASA movie:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130612.html
It shows all Mercury surface in exaggerated colors.
Obviously

"These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance the chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences between the rocks."

I love it.
I'm searching for the original map, but still unfound.
Someone knows where to find it?
Bye

Goofy

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john Van Vliet wrote:the 8 band pds data is here
64 ppd color "MESSENGER MDIS Map Projected Multispectral Reduced Data Record (MDR) Archive."
http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/data/me ... _5001/MDR/

Thanks a lot, John, very appreciated.
Bye

Goofy

Hummmm, too much in a hurry.
Those data are in a format that I'm unable to work, so...
But fortunately I found here
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/mosaics.html
color maps easyer to be worked (at least for mee), geotif and png format.
As you see the largest map (665m/pixel),given a Mercury circumference of 15320 KIm, is more than 23k, so we can have a good 16k image.
Hope to obtain a good color texture for Celestia in a short time.
Bye.

Goofy

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Hi John, thank you for suggestion.
It looks very interesting, but I'm a lazy man, so I used the "easy" way, downloading the 1000m/pixel texture (about 15k) from the above given NASA address, and started working on it.
First of all, there are a lot of black areas, very disappointing, because in NASA movie they are not, so NASA has already solved this problem, without sharing the result, at least up to now, shame on them.
Tomorrow, perhaps...
Anyway I gave a try to make an 8k.png Mercury false color texture.
In the first image you can see a small area of Mercury, and in the second one the same after my work.
Now we have color, saturation and no more black areas.
The last image gives a look to the 8K false-color Mercury...
More images in the nxt post.
Hope you'll like them.
Bye

Goofy

And here three more Mercury 8k false color images from Celestia.
Hope you'll like them.
As I'll be back from a short holiday, I'll try to upload the texture to MotherLode.
Comments, critics, suggestions are very welcome.
Bye.
Goofy

Thank you to all you people who are always making awesome resources.

I have a question/request. Are there any global maps of Mercury including Messenger data at a reasonable resolution that a netbook can handle? Preferably with bumpmaps/normalmaps and locations for the non-Mariner side? I'm trying to do some projects for which I desperately need this and so far I've only found this thread (where I am unclear on where to get the stuff) and JVV's awesome but overkill textures which don't seem to have bumpmaps or locations. Can anyone help with this?

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