Welcome to my Planetary Map Hub! Here you can download maps of other planets for use in 3D raytracing software such as POVRay, Lightwave, and 3DStudio (they should work for any 3D rendering packages though). These maps are designed for spherical projection (Simple Cylindrical Projection onto a sphere, to be exact) using POVray.

As far as I can tell this was one of the first sites on the Web (James Hastings-Trew's was the other big one) that made a serious attempt to collect and make available maps of the planets and satellites of the Solar System for use in raytracing. Now, that mantle has largely been assumed by Dave Seal at JPL, who has put together a veritable goldmine of maps and other space art resources - all freely available to download - at http://maps.jpl.nasa.gov. Still, he doesn't have everything, which means there's still a niche for the rest of us to occupy ;-). Björn Jónsson's website is also well worth a look at for some very detailed (colour!) maps of the Galilean satellites, which are actually better than those released so far by the USGS or NASA! James Hastings-Trew also has plenty of maps available as well as derivative products such as bump and cloud maps.

[My Planetary Maps Index]

(Site Last Updated: 24/2/03)

[Other Map Sites]

LEGAL NOTES: Read these before using any of the maps for important information about how to credit the maps and what you're allowed to use them for. KEY TO MAP DESCRIPTIONS

Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune OTHER WORLDS: Blue Mars Cytherea

PLANETARY MAP SITES ON THE WEB

• Evil Dr Ganymede's Planetary Map Hub - You're already here :). I have maps of Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune - and water-covered versions of Mars and Venus (and topography to go with those) - click on the images above to see and download them.

• Björn Jónsson - Oh my...! Among other things, Björn has the most realistic and up-to-date maps of the Galilean Satellites (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) that I have ever seen, derived from the very latest publicly-released Galileo images - they are in fact more accurate that any made avaiable 'officially' by the USGS to the planetary science community! All the images on his site are constructed using his own software and renderer, which is unique as far as I know because it is photometrically-realistic (no other raytracer that I know of uses the correct light scattering functions for planetary surfaces) - as a result the images look stunning. Defnitely a must-see, and essential if you're doing renderings of the Jovian system!!

• Dave Seal (JPL) - Dave's site contains many of the maps not found here, and is good place to start looking for them. Also check out his main page at http://samadhi.jpl.nasa.gov for more great space art resources, including the incredible Solar System Simulator!

• James Hastings-Trew - Another of the mapping pioneers, James' site includes maps of the planets and some very interesting (and useful!) derivative products like bump maps and masks.

CREDITS: Thanks to Björn Jónsson, James Hastings-Trew, Galen Raben, Anders Sandberg, and DJ Babb for general raytracing thoughts and ideas! Thanks also to David Seal and everyone else at USGS and JPL who works on assembling these maps and making them available! And of course, thanks to all the people that visit and comment on this site ;).

If anyone has any comments on the maps provided here, do let me know! However, please don't ask me to email maps to you (they are quite big, you know...!).