Take an exciting adventure to the Red Planet, Mars, with the greatest ever globe showing Mars’s surface features!
Mars has a long and unique history of fascinating us humans on Earth dating back to the 19th century when Italian astronomer Giovanni Shiaparelli noted what he thought were channels or grooves on the planet’s surface. Soon thereafter, American astronomer Percival Lowell established an observatory in Arizona and set out to observe Mars regularly. Lowell believed the canals on Mars might be irrigation channels built by martians. And thus began a cottage industry in believing that mysterious beings might inhabit the Red Planet.
Mars has fascinated humans for many decades because, life or no life, it represents the closest thing to Earth we have on another world. Of course when the first Mariner spacecraft visited Mars in the 1960s, they found a desolate world. Ideas about martians faded away. But numerous spacecraft over the past 50-plus years, including orbiters, landers, and rovers, have uncovered an amazing planet that tells us a lot about the solar system.
Astronomy magazine is proud to unveil the greatest ever globe showing Mars’s surface features — available exclusively from MyScienceShop.com. Developed by the staff of Astronomy magazine along with cartographer and supervisor, Trent Hare, this globe was produced using maps from the two Viking missions and updated data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) aboard the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS). As its name implies, MOLA collected altimetry data that allowed scientists to determine the height of martian features.
The injection-molded desktop globe shows the features of Mars in unprecedented detail and vibrant color, spanning a full 12 inches across. It shows the entire surface of the planet, with familiar features like craters and mountains to less well known structures like chaoses, labyrinthi, scopuli, and sulci, and labels an astounding 206 features, including where spacecraft have landed and explored.
If you’re a planetary observer, you’ll find all of the features you can see on the Red Planet labeled, including light and dark areas that allow us to capture martian features as they change over time. Olympus Mons, Sinus Meridiani, Syrtis Major, and countless others are there.
You’ll also be able to explore areas that lay in future exploration plans, some of which could drill into subsurface aquifers to finally determine whether life does exist on Mars — very small life.
Each globe is made of long-lasting durable plastic with just a single seam between hemispheres and comes with a clear acrylic display base.
If you’re into astronomy, you simply won’t want to be without this incredible new depiction of Mars, shown as never before.