Venus Public Transit (VPT)

[töff]

Meh to edits. Here are my feature comments.

Thanks again you guys. The other featured maps are amazing. It's a bit intimidating to see my little VPT doodle placed amongst them ... but, hey, I'll try to bear it!

[A. Smith]

Don't be so modest. It rocks. It really looks like something you'd find in a subway on Venus!

Althoguh I AM getting lost, just giving it a short look

[töff]

LOL, 2 people getting lost from my map. Methinks 'tis not so great a sign.

OK, meanwhile, semi-change of subject. I think, for kicks, what I would like to do for the next chapter, called "Leapfrog," in which Ebony (Juliette, the heroine) is chasing after a bad guy, is let you guys pick the locations that she visits in the Solar System. Maybe I can just take the first five suggestions? Come on, I'm offering a free tour of the planets etc. in the 16th Millennium! Who can resist?

I won't put a restriction except that all locations have to be in the Solar system, anywhere from Mercury to Sedna. Mercury was already mentioned once as human-occupied. I also had a brief scene on a station called "Oort-1," which would be way in the hell out there. So, pick your places. I hope you guys are interested enough to suggest something! I'll make the chapter available somewhere. Oughtta be fun Takers?

[töff]

Oh ... sorry ... she can't go to Paris. No. Jamais encore. Das kommt nicht im Frage.

[töff]

Lookit lookit, I got a scroll! *snoopy dance*

[Naeddyr]

I love this map. It feels like a real place, this Venus of yours.

You keep on mentioned the map is in Mercator - was the original in Mercator, or did you convert something else to it? (Iirc, most NASA-related maps I've seen tend to Equirectangular, but come to think of it, I can remember some Mercator as well.)

EDIT:

I've used 'Venerean' for my Steamopera Venusian adjective, but modern astronomy seems to like 'Cytherean'.

[töff]

Thanks Naeddyr ... it IS a real place, in my head. I've got parts of it down on paper, too.

The photo underneath is a composite Mercator, yes, from here or here.

The problem I ran into (and noticed too late to fix) is that the photo's apparently not a true, full Mercator field, pole to pole, and 360° around. But that's how I set up my latitudes and longitudes! So when I was trying to drop in existing real names from this cool real-Venus map, which is spec'ed as lat & long, the dang photo was not matching up to my grid. I did what I could by comparing the satellite terrain features against the painted landmarks in the PDF. The result is not that wrong ... but ... *sigh* Oh well. Live & learn.

Oh, lookit what I just saw ...

The adjective Venusian is commonly used for items related to Venus, though the Latin adjective is the rarely used Venerean; the now-archaic Cytherean is still occasionally encountered. Venus is the only planet in the Solar System named after a female figure, although two dwarf planets—Ceres and Eris—also have female names.

[Naeddyr]

Thanks Naeddyr ... it IS a real place, in my head. I've got parts of it down on paper, too.

The photo underneath is a composite Mercator, yes, from here or here.

töff, I hope I am wrong, but I believe the above images are in the Equirectangular projection, not Mercator at all. For one, their dimensions are the 2x1 you get with Equirectangular; in a Mercator projection, even when it's cut off at a certain point due to the crazy fractal poles, the dimensions are usually in a ratio much smaller than 2-to-1. Second, I tried this out in g.projector, specifically Vertical Perspective, and the poles fit. (You can download g.projector from http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/gprojector/ - it's Java.)

There were alarm bells in my head when I saw you mention Mercator in conjunction with planetary maps... They come from horrible experience.

(Well, in hindsight, there might be no trouble here at all - I don't know how do your map-to-globe conversion, or what program, but there are good chances it is an Equirectangular conversion taking place instead of Mercator, mainly because there is no need to use Mercator in 3d-programs, but Equirectangular is so computationally basic that it's not just for map-projections, but is also used in panoramas and other globular textures as well (which is a part of why the NASA images are in that projection: older maps would probably be in Mercator or similar, iirc).)

Or maybe I'm missing something - I'm not a cartographer, so feel free to hit me if I'm wrong.

EDIT:

Seems the Magellan maps were in Mercator: http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/magellan/image2.html

The dimensions are 1.8:1.

[RPMiller]

LOL, 2 people getting lost from my map. Methinks 'tis not so great a sign.

OK, meanwhile, semi-change of subject. I think, for kicks, what I would like to do for the next chapter, called "Leapfrog," in which Ebony (Juliette, the heroine) is chasing after a bad guy, is let you guys pick the locations that she visits in the Solar System. Maybe I can just take the first five suggestions? Come on, I'm offering a free tour of the planets etc. in the 16th Millennium! Who can resist?

I won't put a restriction except that all locations have to be in the Solar system, anywhere from Mercury to Sedna. Mercury was already mentioned once as human-occupied. I also had a brief scene on a station called "Oort-1," which would be way in the hell out there. So, pick your places. I hope you guys are interested enough to suggest something! I'll make the chapter available somewhere. Oughtta be fun Takers?

Titan! That would be my choice. Followed by one of the big asteroids.

[torstan]

Into a gas giant would be cool, or a trip to the rings of saturn.