Other Resources

Planetary Surface Maps

In order to render the surfaces of the planets and their moons realistically, Voyager needs accurate, high-resolution maps of the planets. These have been obtained or licensed from a number of sources, most of which are listed below.

• Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature - at USGS Astrogeology and the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature. The authority on all of the officially-named features on the surfaces of the other planets and their moons.

• Solar System Simulator - database of JPL/Caltech generated planetary maps, maintained by David Seal, JPL. Older versions of Voyager used maps from this site, but most of them have been superceded by better and more recent data available below.

• Planetary Maps - by Born Jonsson. Currently the best maps of Jupiter and its Galilean satellites, and Saturn and its rings, available anywhere on the Internet. Also a nice atmosphere map of Venus. Voyager uses these.

• Planetary Pixel Emporium - by James Hastings Trew. Excellent maps of Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars, and the gas giant planets. Most of these are currently being used or have been used in some version of Voyager.

• The Planetary Map Hub - by Constantine Thomas. One of the first sites on the Webthat made a serious attempt to collect and make available maps of the planets and satellites of the Solar System. Most of these have been superceded by more recent data.

• Astronomy Datasets - from NOAA's Science on a Sphere program: an animated globe that can show dynamic, animated images of the atmosphere, oceans, and land of a planet. Voyager 4.5 uses the excellent maps of Saturn's moons from Cassini that are available here, as well as improved maps of the Earth, Moon, Mars, Uranus and its moons, and Neptune and Triton.

• Planetary Maps (Global Images) - by Steve Albers. Global planet & satellite images in connection with NOAA's Science On a Sphere® project.

• Small World Atlas - Phil Stooke's collection of maps of non-spherical bodies: asteroids and small satellites.

• Planetary maps - by William Johnston. Voyager uses a few maps of smaller bodies (Amalthea, Janus) from this site. It contains a number of other interesting maps as well, such as Mars with oceans.