Links

This page contains a selection of links from my bookmarks/favourites files. These files are extremely big and mostly in a state of chaos ;-). Only a few links from them are included here. They point to sites containing data used to create these pages (planetary maps and images, renderings and 3D stuff) and/or interesting pages I've come across. For a really big collection of 3D/rendering links visit the POV-Ray site.

Planetary maps and miscellaneous data

• Steve Albers' Planetary Maps (Global Images) - Several high quality planetary maps, including very up to date maps of Saturn's satellites incorporating recent Cassini data.
• USGS maps of the Galilean satellites - A USGS site containing maps of Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. There is only a small version of the "real map" of Io and this one is based on Voyager data only. However, the maps of Callisto, Ganymede and Europa are extremely big and high-quality maps (although they could be improved a little) and they are based on both Voyager and Galileo data.
• The Celestia Motherlode - A big collection of add-ons for the Celestia 3D astronomy program. Includes various types of highly useful planetary maps. The quality of this stuff varies greatly, ranging from very high to fairly low in my opinion.
• USGS maps of Saturn's satellites - A USGS site with very nice maps of Saturn's satellites. However, these maps are based on Voyager data only. Prepared in preparation for the Cassini mission to Saturn. Most of these maps are airbrushed and will soon become outdated (or already are !) thanks to new images from Cassini.
• Small World Atlas 2000 - Maps/images of several asteroids and small satellites, including a far better map of Enceladus than the one available at the above USGS site.
• Cartography of Non-Spherical Worlds - This site is closely related to the Small World Atlas 2000 site mentioned above and has shape models and photomosaics of several asteroids and small satellites.
• The Shape of 433 Eros - A shape model of the asteroid Eros that was characterized in great detail by the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft.
• Digital Asteroid Models - Shape models of several asteroids in Wavefront/Alias OBJ and POV-Ray format. These asteroids have been mapped from Earth using radar.
• PDS Asteroids Data Archive - Has links to shape models for several asteroids and small satellites.
• Blue Marble - Very realistic 8192x4096 pixel maps of the Earth, both texture, cloud maps and city lights. Has a link to an FTP site where enormous texture maps are available in raw format, including 21600x21600 pixel maps for each hemisphere (east/west). Hundreds of megabytes or more of stuff. Also available at the Visible Earth site.
• GTOPO30 - Global Topographic Data, a global digital elevation model (DEM) of the Earth with a resolution of about 1 km/pixel.
• MOLA Science Investigation - The Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) site. The data from this instrument has been used to construct an accurate topographic map of Mars.
• PDS Geosciences Node Data and Services: MGS MOLA MEGDRs This site has MOLA topographic maps of Mars at various resolutions. The biggest one has a resoluton of 128 pixels/degress. This is equivalent to a global 46080 x 23040 pixel map. The map is divided up into 16 files. Each file contains an array of 16 bit signed values. Depending on hardware platform, these may need to be byte swapped to get correct results. You may also need to add some constant to the data to get rid of negative altitude values. Lower resolution versions are also available. You will want the files with names starting with MEGT.
• Voyager PPS Calibrated Profiles - High resolution stellar occultation profiles of the rings of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune from Voyager data. From this the transparency of the rings can be derived as well as highly accurate locations of many ring features.
• ARC Science Simulations - Their Face of the Earth is an extremely realistic map of the Earth complete with a separate cloud map. It is the most realistic Earth map that I have ever seen - no saturated pastel colors, violet tinted oceans or stuff like that. This site is commercial but you get what you pay for.
• David Seal's page - Lots of planetary maps, renderings and other nice stuff. Essential for anyone interested in planetary rendering although many of the maps there are getting outdated.
• Constantine Thomas' planetary maps page - Another site with maps and also POV-Ray models of spacecraft, including an amazingly accurate model of the Voyager spacecraft (the real thing that flew by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, not some Star Trek stuff). Also contains interesting planetary renderings (I particularly like his Venus with oceans) done with Povray plus Povray tips.
• James Hastings-Trew - Several maps, including texture maps of the Earth that were the best ones of the freely available Earth maps until superseded by the Blue Marble map above. Also a few other interesting maps, in particular bump maps.
• Ralph Aeschliman Planetary Cartography and Graphics - Maps of Venus, Mars and the Moon.
• Space-Graphics - Maps of the Earth, Mars and several asteroid meshes.
• USGS Astrogeology: Europa Voyager Control Base Mosaic - The USGS map of Europa I used as a basis for my new map, replacing parts of it with new, higher resolution data.
• DLR - Cassini/Huygens: Voyager base maps of the Icy Saturnian satellites - Digital image cylindrical mosaics of Saturn's satellites. Unlike the USGS maps none of these maps are airbrushed so they are more interesting and in general more realistic although in contrast to the airbrushed maps, illumination is not uniform and some seams are visible. This site also has lots of interesting information (in German) on the Cassini mission to Saturn.
• NSSDC CD-ROM catalog - CDs with "raw" images from various spacecraft (Voyager, Viking, Magellan etc.) can be ordered here. This was my main source of the Voyager images used to create several of the planetary models at my site.
• PDS Imaging Node - Homepage - "Raw" data from various spacecraft is available online at this site. My main source of the Galileo data I used to create the Europa, Ganymede and Callisto planetary maps.
• IJW FTP site - An apparently obscure site containing big maps of Ganymede and Io in FITS format, some of it 16 bits/pixel black-and-white (so maybe you can't use this - I had to add support for these beasts to my software to do so). The Ganymede map sucks (it is very low-res and fuzzy) but the Io map is by far the best Voyager-based map of that satellite I have seen.
• International Outer Planet Watch - Satellite Discipline - This site has several maps in its maps section, including more "user friendly" versions of maps from the above FTP site.
• Doug Fortune's site - Elevation/bump maps of the Earth at various (including very high) resolutions pieced together from public domain data from the USGS but in a format that is much easier to read, also the data is one file=one map instead of many files as the original USGS data. Very nice.
• Download Planet Earth - An attempt to put the whole earth into a PC. Lots of interesting info, links and resources.
• Polygon Worlds - Lots !!! of renderings, topographic maps, contour maps etc., particularly of Mars using the MOLA data but also some interesting Venus and Earth stuff.
• Planetary Topography from Stereo Imagery Project - Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data for Mercury, the Moon and Mars. Not global maps but still interesting, especially the Moon stuff.

Personal pages

• Don Davis Space Art - The home page of one of the heavyweights in space art. Includes extremely interesting discussion on colors in space, including colors in the solar system (a subject I'm very interested in) as well paintings, CGIs, photos and more.
• Planetside, the home of Terragen - Absolutely incredible (more adjectives here !) 3D landscape renderings from a "landscape generator". Highly recommended - the best landscape renderings I've seen on the web.
• John Spencer's Astronomical Visualizations - Many spectacular Imagine and Bryce renderings and some animations. Also a detailed description of how to render Saturn's rings in Imagine.
• 3D Space - The most interesting Icelandic ray tracing/rendering stuff page I've come across. It has several interesting things - space related/science fiction renderings, animations, interesting links and lots of interesting (i.e. 3D related) stuff. Especially interesting for Lightwave users.
• Magic Software - Lots of interesting source code, much of it originating from support to the comp.graphics.algorithms news group.
• The good-looking textured light-sourced bouncy fun smart and stretchy page - A long title. Go and see for yourself, the content at this site is very interesting, much more interesting than the title...
• The Looking Planet - Eric Anderson's space renderings as well as a nice albedo map of the Moon derived from Galileo images.
• Paul Heckbert's Web Page - Lots of interesting theoretical stuff (g-zipped Postscript files).
• Eric Haines' Ray Tracing News - A lot of (technical) info on ray tracing (and 3D related stuff in general). Ever heard of Plücker coordinates ? No ? Then check this one out !
• DeltaWeb - This one is incredible, see for yourself. Not to be missed.
• Paul Bourke - Some 3D-related algorithms and lots of other stuff.
• Home page for John Beale - Very realistic renderings of asteroids and landscapes. Also has very interesting programs (Gforge; source code included) for creating Povray models of e.g. asteroids, landscapes using heightfields etc. This can be used to create e.g. cratered asteroids so this is an essential site for anyone interested in planetary rendering. Highly recommended.
• Tomoyuki Nishita - Interesting renderings, research topics and theoretical stuff, including very interesting information on how to create ultra-realistic renderings of the Earth with full atmospheric effects. Probably even more complicated than it is interesting though ;)
• Ken Perlin's homepage - Lots of interesting stuff, including an "earth-like" planet that runs interactively in Web-browsers.
• Terragen computer generated landscapes - Incredible Terragen renderings of the asteroid Eros plus other stuff.
• Johnston's Archive--Space Art - A few nice space renderings and a very good list of links to interesting sites, including a few sites I didn't know of (something's strange about that ;-).
• Matt Aquiletti's Astronomical Art - Renderings of real and fictional planets, the best IMHO being those of Saturn and its satellites.

Miscellaneous 3D stuff, tips, online galleries, software etc.

• POV-Ray - A free (and very powerful) ray tracer. There are countless renderings and other stuff associated with POV all over the web. The links section at this site is also the biggest collection of 3D/rendering links that I have come across. Highly recommended.
• Daylon Graphics - Leveller (tm) Heightfield Editor - A heightfield object modeller for Windows 9x/NT. Can create heightfields for POV-Ray. Very useful.
• Making Animations for the Web - The info from this page got me started in creating animations. Highly recommened, probably getting a little outdated though.
• Animation and Video on PCs - More on the above topic.
• Space Movie Archive - A big collection of astronomy and space related animations. Seems this site is no longer being maintained/updated but still an interesting resource.
• 3D Graphic Engines - A big list of 3D engines available on the web. Probably no longer being maintained on a regular basis.
• PNG (Portable Network Graphics) Home Page - This graphical file format is vastly superior to GIF - hopefully it will replace GIF. This is the main "native" format of the applications I have developed/used for most of my 3D stuff.
• Wotsit's Format: The programmer's file formats and data formats resource - Information on lots of file formats, including graphical formats like PNG, JPG, GIF etc.
• Solar Voyager - A large online collection of space art by many well known space artists.
• International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA) - Resources and links related to space art. Links to the homepages of many of the best known space artists.

Spacecraft

• Project Galileo (JPL) - The Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter in 1995-2003. My Europa, Ganymede and Callisto maps include lots of Galileo data.
• Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn and Titan - The Cassini spacecraft that is presently orbiting Saturn. Has returned lots of spectacular images of Saturn and its system of rings and satellites..
• Mars Global Surveyor - A spacecraft that has been orbiting Mars since 1997, returning an impressive collection of images, topographic data and other measurements.
• Voyager - The spacecraft that flew by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and many of their satellites in the 70's and 80's. Several of my maps/models are based on Voyager images.

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