Make: Volume 74

PROJECTS: Map the Solar System

TOPOGRAPHIC MAPS OF THE

MOON AND PLANETS

This shows how to make topo maps of planets

and moons using open-source data from the

USGS, IAU, and NASA. I wanted to map each of

the rocky planets in the same style: Mercury,

Mars, Venus, and the Moon. To begin, I used

GDAL to convert the DEM files to orthographic

projection, then downsampled these and created

hillshade and slope maps for each hemisphere.

Next, I made five Python plots with the contour

fills, contour lines, text labels, and two types of

gridlines (Figure

A

). Finally, I used matplotlib

gridspec so that each of my subplots occupy the

exact pixel locations ...