Frans Blok's Map of Red, Green and Blue Mars

This map of Mars in the year M-100 (AD 2219) by Frans Blok is based on the trilogy of novels about Mars written by Kim Stanley Robinson: Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars. They're available in your favorite bookstore or library.

RGB Mars	.
High quality copy of RGB Mars map provided by Frans Blok	RGB Mars place names

The versions of these maps above were provided by Frans Blok. Because of their dimensions, they are not compatible with Celestia. The versions of these maps below were adapted by Selden Ball with the permission of Frans Blok. They have been scaled appropriately for use with Celestia.

See also:

• The Red, Green & Blue MarsSite
• Selden's List of Celestia Resources
  • Selden's Gallery of Mars Maps

Note:

These maps all have 0 degrees of longitude in the center. They work fine with the current version of Celestia (v1.3.0 or later). However, they'll produce the wrong phase if used with early versions of Celestia, up through v1.2.5pre7. A version of solarsys.ssc which corrects this problem is available on the Web page http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/hutchison/index.html.

RGB Mars for Celestia	.
When extracting these archives into your Celestia directory, most Zip programs will place the files automatically into the appropriate subdirectories. Once the files are in the right places, you then can select RGBMars as a destination.	These .ZIP files include versions of Frans' map which have been scaled to be compatible with Celestia.
rgbmars.zip (515KB 12Dec2002) rgbmars-13.zip (515KB, 25Mar03) This .ZIP archive has been reorganized for optimal use with Celestia v1.3 or later. It should be restored into the /extras/ directory, where it will create a subdirectory named rgbmars containing all the necessary files.	This Zip archive contains the minimum number of files necessary to display the RGB Mars in our Solar System. rgbmars-readme.txt extras/rgbmars.ssc textures/medres/rgbmars-names-2k.png textures/medres/rgbmars-spec.jpg textures/medres/rgbmars.jpg
rgbmars-big.zip (1.8MB 12Dec2002) rgbmars-big-13.zip (1.8MB, 25Mar03) This .ZIP archive has been reorganized for optimal use with Celestia v1.3 or later. It should be restored into the /extras/ directory, where it will create a subdirectory named rgbmars containing all the necessary files.	This Zip archive contains all of the files listed above plus the JPEG lores and hires surface and specular maps: rgbmars-readme.txt extras/rgbmars.ssc textures/lores/rgbmars-spec.jpg textures/lores/rgbmars.jpg textures/medres/rgbmars-names-2k.png textures/medres/rgbmars-spec.jpg textures/medres/rgbmars.jpg textures/hires/rgbmars-spec.jpg textures/hires/rgbmars.jpg
rgbmars-dds.zip (2.4MB 12Dec2002) rgbmars-dds-13.zip (2.4MB, 25Mar03) This .ZIP archive has been reorganized for optimal use with Celestia v1.3 or later. It should be restored into the /extras/ directory, where it will create a subdirectory named rgbmars containing all the necessary files.	This Zip archive contains DDS texture maps instead of their JPEG counterparts: rgbmars-dds-readme.txt extras/rgbmars-dds.ssc textures/lores/rgbmars-spec.dds textures/lores/rgbmars.dds textures/medres/rgbmars-names-2k.png textures/medres/rgbmars-spec.dds textures/medres/rgbmars.dds textures/hires/rgbmars-spec.dds textures/hires/rgbmars.dds
.	.

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RGB Mars Gallery	.
Still Images	.
RGB Mars by Celestia	Closeup of RGB Mars by Celestia A bubble on the surface?
Movie Clips	.
RGB Mars AVI by Celestia (840KB 29-Nov-2002) Time running at 1000x. 5 second clip, 320x240, 24fps Encoding: Indeo(R) video 5.10	RGB Mars WMV (2MB 29-Nov-2002) A day in the life of RGB Mars, again with time running at 1000x. 44 second clip, 320x240, 30fps Encoding: Windows Media Video
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Components of RGB Mars for Celestia	The files below are what are included in the .ZIP archives above. If you download the .ZIP archives, you do not need to get these.
rgbmars.ssc	When copied to the /extras/ directory, this overlays our Mars by RGB Mars and uses the JPEG maps.
rgbmars-dds.ssc	When copied to the /extras/ directory, this also overlays our Mars by RGB Mars, but it uses .DDS texture maps instead of .JPEG files.
Here are the individual versions of Frans' map	scaled to be compatible with Celestia.
2Kx1K PNG Texture map of RGB Mars' place names	rgbmars-names-2k.png 2Kx1K PNG Texture map of RGB Mars' place names (263KB) When loaded as a "cloud texture", this image labels locations on the RGB globe. (Note that this image was not used for the "RGB Mars by Celestia" image or AVI above.)
.	Reminder: these are the maps included in the .ZIP files above.
2Kx1K JPEG Texture map of RGB Mars	rgbmars-2k.jpg 2Kx1K JPEG Texture map of RGB Mars (1.2MB) rgbmars-2k.dds 2Kx1K DDS Texture map of RGB Mars (2.7MB) rgbmars-1k.jpg 1Kx512 JPEG medres texture map of RGB Mars (303KB) rgbmars-1k.dds 1Kx512 DDS Texture map of RGB Mars (682KB) rgbmars-512.jpg 512x256 JPEG lores texture map of RGB Mars (70KB) rgbmars-512.dds 512x256 DDS Texture map of RGB Mars (170KB)
2Kx1K Texture map of specular reflections	rgbmars-spec-2k.jpg 2Kx1K Texture map of specular reflections rgbmars-spec-2k.dds 2Kx1K DDS Texture map of RGB Mars (2.7MB) rgbmars-spec-1k.jpg 1Kx512 map of specular reflections (45KB) rgbmars-spec-1k.dds 1Kx512 DDS map of RGB Mars specular reflections (682KB) rgbmars-spec-512.jpg 512x256 Texture map of specular reflections (18KB) rgbmars-spec-512.dds 512x256 DDS map of RGB Mars specular reflections (170KB)

Note:

Despite the larger sizes, DDS files load at least 3x as fast as the corresponding JPEG images if your graphics hardware can use them. This usually requires "modern" cards or ones based on Nvidia graphics chips.

See also:

• The Red, Green & Blue MarsSite
• Selden's List of Celestia Resources
  • Selden's Gallery of Mars Maps

Updates:

• 12Dec2002: Maps rotated to have 0 degrees of longitude in the center.
• 18Mar2003: Reorganized page

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The original maps of RGB Mars were provided by Frans Blok.
Celestia screenshots, AVIs, SSCs and textures are by Selden.

This Web page is maintained by Selden Ball at Wilson Lab.
Please send any comments or corrections to seb@lepp.cornell.edu