Celestia Forums

Hi,

Does anybody know if higher resolution Venusmaps (4k and higher) are available somewhere ? Some people are working on high resolution Earth, Moon and Marsmaps, but Venus seems to be a neglected planet, even after Magellan !

Ron

Expanding Arcturus' plea a bit further, there must be a repository of high resolution maps of all the planets. So far though I have only found Earth and Mars. Jupiter with its complex cloudscape would be ideal candidate for a high res map.

Have either of you seen John's Celestia Page?

Grant

it's so slow, though.
i've managed to compile high-res textures for the earth, the moon, mars, and the four galilean satellites of jupiter. those i got from john's page, and they're magnificent.. took bloody forever to grab 'em, though.

i've stumbled across a higher resolution cloudscape for venus, and a high res texture for mercury as well.. even though we don't know much about it
i'm aiming to put together a nice large repository of high-res textures for all of the planets.. they're almost all VTs.. currently:

Mercury
- mercury base VT, limit-of-knowledge complete up to level 3

Venus
- 2k dds cloud image

Earth
- "Blue Marble" base VT, complete up to level 5, some areas up to level 10
- earth night-side lights VT, complete up to level 5
- earth normal map VT, complete up to level 3
- earth specular map VT, complete up to level 3, some areas up to level 10
- 8k dds cloud layer

Moon
- moon base VT, complete up to level 2
- 8k dds normal map

Mars (I enjoy this one the most so far)
- mars base VT, complete up to level 4
- mars normal map VT, complete up to level 4

Jupiter
- I had a texture I grabbed from John's site, but I didn't like it.. still looking for a good one.

Callisto, Io, Ganymede
- all 3 moons with base VTs complete up to level 3
- all 3 moons with normal map VTs complete up to level 3

Europa
- europa base VT complete up to level 3
- 8k png normal map
- 8k png specular map

Saturn
- 2k dds base texture

Iapetus
- 1k jpg base texture

Everything else worthwhile I'm still looking for, especially higher-res Saturn and Jupiter textures.. would be nice to have one central location.. files are so big, though. Anyone have a few gigs to spare?

cool galileo keep us informed of your progress

Galileo,

you're mentioning a 2k Venus cloud map, but what about the surface ???


Ron

Well, if you can't bear to wait for a download from John's page, there's a copyright free 5k Venus map at http://www.solarviews.com/cap/venus/venmap.htm, which just needs resized and rotated through 180 degrees to match the Celestia standards. With a bit of cosmetic surgery it would make a fine additional texture.

Grant

Or did you mean cosmic surgery?

Arcturus :
Highres Magellan data (and other stuff) here : http://pdsmaps.wr.usgs.gov/maps.html
but you'll have to extract the data at your desired definition and stitch it together yourself ! I've been using a lowish res. Venus map made from this site for a year or two,,, but now I am confused by the site pointed to by Grant ! :-----

Grant :
>"and rotated through 180 degrees "
are we sure about this ? The edge of the map at http://www.solarviews.com/cap/venus/venmap.htm, does not seem to be at either 0 or 180 deg longitude according to the PDS/NASA site. Here are my notes for your's perusal :- http://uk.geocities.com/ptarmigana/celestia/page3.htm

Ptarmigan wrote:>"and rotated through 180 degrees "
are we sure about this ?

Yes, though I think my meaning wasn't clear. The map has ecliptic north at the top, whereas Celestia requires ecliptic north to be at the bottom for retrograde rotators like Venus - hence the need for a true 180-degree rotation in the picture plane. (I'm trying to restrict myself to using "rotation" in this sense, since Selden and I managed to confuse Bob for quite a while when we spoke about longitude rotations.)
It also, as the documentation says, has 240E at the edge of the map, so needs a 60-degree rightward shift in longitude before rotation (or leftward shift afterwards). I did type that in my original posting, but seem to have contrived to chop it out during a bit of editing - must've highlighted more than one line for a delete, or some such Sorry for the confusion.

Grant

Ahhh! Thanks Grant, I am understanding now.
I had read a lot in the forum about the longitude problem and jumped to an erroneous conclusion, sorry.
I have missed the ecliptic/retrograde discussions, so now I have learned something.
arrggghhh ! this means that I have been orbiting Venus on my head all these years then !

>>" as the documentation says, has 240E at the edge of the map"
Doh! I'll blame this one on my 56k modem, I set it to downloading the 4M map and went away to pour a beer, obviously I should have used the time to read the site proper !

Malcolm.

Ptarmigan wrote:I have missed the ecliptic/retrograde discussions, so now I have learned something.

The Celestia standard for the north pole obeys the right-hand-rotation rule - the body appears to rotate anticlockwise if you look down at it along its axis from the Celestia north pole. This approach is often (but not always) used by asteroid scientists. It can also be applied anywhere in the universe without having to refer back to the solar system, so seems like the natural standard for Celestia to use.
Unfortunately it conflicts with the IAU mapping standard, which is to call whichever pole points north of the ecliptic "north", irrespective of the direction of rotation: the direction of rotation is then coded into the map longitude; measured westwards for direct rotators, and eastward for retrograde rotators.
So when you find a map that gives you an east longitude (like the Venus map did), that's letting you know it's a retrograde, and it's going to need a rotation for use in Celestia. (Exceptions are the Earth and Moon, which uniquely measure longitude both west and east, for purely historical consistency; and Mars, which unfortunately has two separate mapping systems, championed by various scientists for various purposes, and distinguished by the fact one uses east longitude and one uses west longitude )

Grant

Thanks Grant, excellent explanation.

And that explains why the cloud patterns in the venus.jpg in my 1.1.4 and 1.2.5 point the opposite way to that which is in 1.3.1 !

Malcolm,
learning new things every day.

Hi the 16k Venus map i am working on is a composit of images from

http://pdsmaps.wr.usgs.gov/maps.html

and i do know that my site is slow , but i am broke (no$$$) and can not aford hosting for a 3 Gig. - yes Gig - site . when the 32k venus , mars, and earth VT's are added -a 5+ gig site

i am glad that you like the maps eventhough the dl is slow