planetary mapping

during my research, and as data manager of the ucl rpif, i like nothing more than sitting down and indulging in a spot of planetary mapping. this means taking the data from the pds, processing it (usually) using isis, and then importing it into arcgis to begin work. i've also recently started dabbling in making dtms from hirise stereo images (example shown below). some of these dtms have been animated by doug ellison, and you can see some of those results at his youtube channel. i particularly urge you to have a look at the pathfinder animation - we were pretty chuffed with the results!

for my fellowship i'm looking at ice-related features on mars, but i'm very interested in working with people who need to access planetary data and don't have the tools to do so. please feel free to drop me an email if you need some help, or have some projects in mind.

during my undergraduate and postgraduate times i produced quite a few planetary maps, mostly centred around volcanic features. io, mars and the moon featured pretty heavily during my msci days, while i obviously concentrated on venus for my phd. below are some maps from my thesis, which a small explanation in each case.

regional mapping

i produced 4 geological maps as part of an in-depth study of some volcano-corona hybrids on venus. we combined this work with some gravity stuff antony brian did out at jpl and got it into the journal of the geological society (check out my publications page). click on any of the maps for a larger version, or have a look at Chapter 5 in my thesis for some theory to go with it.

api mons, venus. Mainly sheet and digitate flows, with a partial topographic rim around the summit.	atai mons, venus. lots of lava flows, but also radial and concentric fractures and massive summit depression.	kokyanwuti mons, venus. loads of overlapping lava flows, which intermingle with flows from a corona to the west.	uti hiata mons, venus. pretty simple flows: summit, digitate and sheet. nice parasitic dome on the southern flanks.

limit of resolution mapping

this was a really interesting part of my thesis, and one which i still have some plans for. the idea was to see what difference mapping a single f-map of venus at the limit of resolution (1: 1.5M scale) made, compared to the usual regional maps (1:5M scale) which the USGS VMAP program produces. there are some conclusions in Chapter 3 of my thesis, and a paper in the journal of maps which go into more detail (link to the paper on my publications page). i'd really recommend having a look at the journal of maps website, it has some really nice maps and interesting articles, and is a very good idea for publishing maps. without boring you with all the details of the map, we saw lots and lots of small volcanoes (1000s), loads of corona flows and, rather surprisingly, quite a few ridge-related flows. and i think the implications are probably very important for looking at cassini sar images, in which every pixel is going to be poured over (it's very easy to over-interpret!). anyway, enough waffle, here's the map.

geological map of the aglaonice fmap region on venus. loads of corona flows, small volcanoes and, surprisingly, ridge-related lava flows.

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