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Show HN: Open-source high-res Mars map, in natural colors
- corysama 5y agoThis looks pretty awesome. First thing I notice is that scrolling a tiny bit fills my browser back button history with one address per scroll tick? That rather rude.
- space2026 5y agoThanks! Great feedback. We've opened an issue and will fix soon https://github.com/mars-2026/mars26_com/issues/1 https://github.com/mars-2026/mars26_com/issues/1
- space2026 5y agoHi HN, we are a small team of space fans who simply wanted a better Mars map. Read about our motivation and process here https://medium.com/mars26/the-most-detailed-mars-map-yet-7170e0cc851b https://medium.com/mars26/the-most-detailed-mars-map-yet-717.... If you do want to keep up to date, feel free to follow us on Twitter. More features are in the pipeline https://twitter.com/marstwentysix https://twitter.com/marstwentysix We love PRs and love to hear your feedback on https://github.com/mars-2026/mars26_com https://github.com/mars-2026/mars26_com! — Space P at Mars26.com
- divbzero 5y agoAwesome! Curious if the team has plans or interest in building an open-source high-res map of the Moon as well? Or does Google Moon avoid the low-res shortcomings of Google Mars?
- space2026 5y agoThere are great high-res maps of Moon out there already. E.g https://carto.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer3d/index.html https://carto.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer3d/index.html Whereas for Mars somehow nobody had worked on it yet. That said, I could see us hosting a similar site for Moon, too!
- monkeydust 5y agoKudos - awesome work guys - I am trying to find a good spot my great great great grandkids could build on :)
- space2026 5y agooh you will love the features we have on the backlog :)
- billfruit 5y agoWhat is the fundamental dataset used for it? In recent years more probes have done Mars imaging, which probe has given the highest resolution images?
- OmicronCeti 5y agoThey primarily use CTX, but HiRISE has the highest resolution, 0.25-0.5m/pixel.
- space2026 5y agoRight. HiRISE is awesome, but covers only roughly 5% of Mars surface. Check the blog we posted above [1], it gives very detailed explanation on that. [1] https://medium.com/mars26/the-most-detailed-mars-map-yet-7170e0cc851b https://medium.com/mars26/the-most-detailed-mars-map-yet-717...
- coolspot 5y agoDoes it support driving directions and traffic overlay?
- space2026 5y agoWell, it's technically possible to serve any feature layer via the API.. I'd assume there isn't that much traffic though. Although I've heard air traffic is picking up lately, even some nuclear-powered rovers
- systemvoltage 5y agoBtw, it breaks the back button atleast on Firefox when navigating. I think its because of 302 redirects from the backend?
- skybrian 5y agoVery neat, but there are only a few places on Mars I recognize well enough to find. It would be good to have a list of points of interest and a way to go to them. There's also a Twitter symbol at one point on the globe; not sure why?
- space2026 5y agoNice idea! We'll add a feature layer with points of interest. Clicking the Twitter symbol should show you somebody's tweet on that position. Works in Chrome, and we'll add support for Firefox (soon) which currently blocks it
- beshrkayali 5y agoVery neat! Nice work! Your Twitter app permission list is very excessive tho.
- space2026 5y agoOh yea, noted. We'll update it today
- JoBrad 5y agoAttempting to zoom in or out on my iPhone 12 freezes the site. I’m using Safari.
- space2026 5y agoThanks for the feedback! Added it to the list :) https://github.com/mars-2026/mars26_com/issues/4 https://github.com/mars-2026/mars26_com/issues/4
- thejohnconway 5y agoSimilar problem here, a single action works (pan or zoom), then the map is frozen and I can’t do anything. I’m using the latest Safari on an iPad Pro.
- ArtTimeInvestor 5y agoIs there an actual image of the mars surface somewhere? I poked around the repo but could not find one.
- pmontra 5y agoI think this is where the app loads the images from a server https://github.com/mars-2026/mars26_com/blob/main/src/components/esri/MarsSceneView.tsx https://github.com/mars-2026/mars26_com/blob/main/src/compon...
- space2026 5y agoYes, we are hosting an WMTS server which serves images corresponding to a user's current coordinates and zoom level. One image of the whole surface in full-res would be about 150 GB.
- aero-glide2 5y ago>While Google’s Mars map uses low resolution images taken in the 70’s Have you checked out Google Earth for Mars? (not Google mars). It provides hi-rise images, and in 3d.
- snypher 5y agoOnly at Google would; -Google Earth -Google Mars -Google Earth for Mars ...be three things. Just make Google Earth with a planet drop-down. Edit: seems like this is an option on Google Maps(?)
- jyriand 5y agoWhat they need is a fourth app called Google Planet
- space2026 5y agoGood point. Google has two Mars Maps. Both are okay-ish. But not good enough really. Let me explain. Google Mars Maps[1] shows images from the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC)[2], which produces grey scale and up to 1.5m per pixel. Not quite what we aim for nor what we think is enough. Google Earth Pro is another one. I appreciate you bring it up, and I'll add a remark to the blog post. What I like about Google Earth' Mars map is that it offers multiple layers of different quality images, similar to NASA's Mars Trek[3]. Besides, it presents a globe view. Both helps conceptualize the whole experience. However, Google Earth is missing a lot. First, we built a web app. Easy access for everybody. Second, we want to present the real Mars. An image just like you would stand in front of it, like Google Earth for Earth: True color, no jumps between image tiles. NASA does a better job than Google at that. However, neither show natural color, combined with high resolution. Google Earth uses a blend of Viking imagery, just like we do. However, they use MOC instead of CTX imagery for that. Which results in somewhat high-res too, but they managed to make it look cut up and unnatural. Their CTX map is low coverage, and of course grey scale. Our solution: We merge natural color photographs with high-resolution images to offer one combined image. And we'll add elevation in 2-3 days. [1] https://www.google.com/mars/ https://www.google.com/mars/ [2] http://www.msss.com/all_projects/mgs-mars-orbiter-camera.php http://www.msss.com/all_projects/mgs-mars-orbiter-camera.php [3] https://trek.nasa.gov/mars/ https://trek.nasa.gov/mars/
- young_unixer 5y agoOh god, did Twitter infect mars already?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- zokier 5y agoThe Murray Lab has done great work on the CTX imagery (which this is based on), and it's also pretty well documented. If you are interested in that sort of thing you can read about it here: http://murray-lab.caltech.edu/CTX/index.html http://murray-lab.caltech.edu/CTX/index.html Are you using the public beta dataset, or did you get access to more refined data?
- space2026 5y agoThey are great! We use their public beta CTX images. When we contacted them, they said the blended CTX images will be out of beta by end of the year :)
- fl0ralsx 5y agoOh wow! Awesome work!
- MayeulC 5y agothere seems to be excessive distorsion at the poles. Is this for a lack of data, or is it due to the coordinate system? The poles are the most interesting part to me, but there doesn't seem to be a way to control lighting, so they are at least partially obscured. Moreover, I'd have expected the terminator to be less fuzzy due to Mars' thin atmosphere, but it might be just me.
- OmicronCeti 5y agoThe coordinate system changes from equirectangular to polar stereo. The poles just don't get good imagery from the MRO. I work extensively with HiRISE data which is collected from the same orbiter as the CTX data this map uses.
- leoncvlt 5y agoLooks good! I like the atmospheric halo around the planet when you zoom out being dependant on the light direction and the angle you're looking at the planet from. I've tried to get a grasp of how it's working on the 3D side by having a look at the github sourcecode, but seems like it's all managed by the "sceneview" module from the ArcGIS software as opposed to a custom implementation, is it?
- space2026 5y agoThanks! That's right. We did look into more open alternatives, but went with ArcGIS and spent our time on the image processing instead. Could be cool to build an alternative site eg. with Leaflet.
- twobitshifter 5y agoWhen zoomed out black tweets do not show against the backdrop of space.
- space2026 5y agoRight. It works in Chrome so far. Firefox blocks the Twitter part. We have opened an issue already and should be working on it soon.
- zokier 5y agoI want to like it but its pretty rough as-is. I feel the colors need lot of tweaking to look right, the blending in between missing data on both ctx and viking needs to be improved. Right now the pretty red planet looks sickly and moldy, with awkward artifacts all over the place. Compare e.g. the surroundings of Jezero crater (Percys landing site) on this Mars26 vs HRSC data: https://mars26.com/#heading=0&latitude=18.628109809050898&longitude=77.70925090612008&tilt=0&zoom=8 https://mars26.com/#heading=0&latitude=18.628109809050898&lo... https://maps.planet.fu-berlin.de/#map=8/4646647.81/1124272.2 https://maps.planet.fu-berlin.de/#map=8/4646647.81/1124272.2 Or this region; I'm pretty sure its not supposed to be blue: https://mars26.com/#heading=359.79651286245115&latitude=-40.944069824868876&longitude=70.69793578883082&tilt=0.2816141922251806&zoom=5.030236301766781 https://mars26.com/#heading=359.79651286245115&latitude=-40....
- space2026 5y agoThanks for the feedback! Yes, it is hard to get right. That's why neither NASA nor Google have a great blend. The artifacts should be mostly gone with our next version which we are rendering in the next few days. Greyish areas come from areas where Viking imagery is mostly black. We also updated this part in the next model. Thouhg, that's a tough one. Let's see how you like the next version!
- zokier 5y agoAre you also adjusting the overall color? Your images have now strong pinkish cast instead of the more natural orangeish tones. For parts where viking data is not usable, maybe filling in the color information based upon surrounding area would make at least prettier end result.
- space2026 5y agoYes, those are two really good points. What we do is first we have to find a middle ground on color, contrast, brightness between all Viking photographs. Because there are differences between each. Then we make a decision of what an average color looks like. Filling in an average color for the overexposed areas is what we'll do for version 1.0 coming in a few days. Running locally it does already look quite nice. Hope it will turn out well on the web app!