HOME | DD

Description
Map of mars if it was covered in water. boy, did I have fun with this one.

-Edit, Ed Balls Day, 2015

Didn't realise there'd be so many views from across the internet so here's a bit of background.

- I envisioned a terraformation process with water drawn from Uranus or comets as well as the poles. There isn't enough water on mars for there to be an effective water cycle (not enough surface area = not enough evaporation = planetary desert).

- I also ignored the fact that Argyre (the gigantic sea in the south-west) might be completely dry. Or that half the craters on the planet might become high-elevation lakes (Seas? Some of them are larger than France). Or that the huge amount of water would offset the planet's centre of gravity and create another "sea level" on the other side of the planet.

- The blue "beach" is a short and extremely crude calculation I did in my head to work out what the frozen poles would do to the sea level. I didn't take displacement into account.

- I used a black-and-white heightmap (solarviews.com/raw/mars/marscy… ) that differs greatly from the coloured relief one most people use (tharsis.gsfc.nasa.gov/c2880x21… ).
Obviously I'm not sure which one is correct; after all, they might both be (due to different definitions of the "centre" of the planet and what constitutes a crater or a mountain. I get the impression that the coloured one smooths out the huge chunks missing from the north of mars).
I used the greyscale map because it didn't have any shadows, was more accurate and scaled with brightness, and was easier to photoshop. The coloured map also made Tharsis (the continent with the three massive mountains) way larger that I liked.

- I did this for entertainment purposes rather than educational. I've been making maps since I was 5 so the process was still pretty autistic, but I didn't do any thorough research outside wikipedia and vague assumptions. NASA, pls do not use.

Description
Map of mars if it was covered in water. boy, did I have fun with this one.

-Edit, Ed Balls Day, 2015

Didn't realise there'd be so many views from across the internet so here's a bit of background.

- I envisioned a terraformation process with water drawn from Uranus or comets as well as the poles. There isn't enough water on mars for there to be an effective water cycle (not enough surface area = not enough evaporation = planetary desert).

- I also ignored the fact that Argyre (the gigantic sea in the south-west) might be completely dry. Or that half the craters on the planet might become high-elevation lakes (Seas? Some of them are larger than France). Or that the huge amount of water would offset the planet's centre of gravity and create another "sea level" on the other side of the planet.

- The blue "beach" is a short and extremely crude calculation I did in my head to work out what the frozen poles would do to the sea level. I didn't take displacement into account.

- I used a black-and-white heightmap (solarviews.com/raw/mars/marscy… ) that differs greatly from the coloured relief one most people use (tharsis.gsfc.nasa.gov/c2880x21… ).
Obviously I'm not sure which one is correct; after all, they might both be (due to different definitions of the "centre" of the planet and what constitutes a crater or a mountain. I get the impression that the coloured one smooths out the huge chunks missing from the north of mars).
I used the greyscale map because it didn't have any shadows, was more accurate and scaled with brightness, and was easier to photoshop. The coloured map also made Tharsis (the continent with the three massive mountains) way larger that I liked.

- I did this for entertainment purposes rather than educational. I've been making maps since I was 5 so the process was still pretty autistic, but I didn't do any thorough research outside wikipedia and vague assumptions. NASA, pls do not use.