Mapping planets

[z993126]

The cartographer in me wonders what's the easiest way to properly make an equirectangular projection map of a given planet in Elite. Orbiting the planet and taking loads of screenies is well and good, but how does one gracefully reassemble them into a relatively distortion-free final product?

 

[Riverside]

The entire cartography community has faced this dilemma for hundreds of years, there is no one catch-all answer better than plotting it onto a 3d ball, same as the game does.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

Ask a Flat Earther.

 

[Amargosa]

lol

 

[DNA-Decay]

You know how they have a grid on the body now?

If only that had some co-ords on it.
At least +/- 0 90 180 long and 0 45 90 lat

Canonn have a Thargoid Barnacle spreadsheet.
I’ve started making maps of planets using BIO / GEO known co-ords and barnacle co-ords.
I’ll be back in a minute with a hand drawn one, but we should be able to make a scatter plot type map

 

[z993126]

Am specifically interested in doing whatever it is NASA does to get an equirectangular (the best projection, obviously) map of a body out of the reams of snapshots they take with orbiting probes.

 

[Amargosa]

You know how they have a grid on the body now?

If only that had some co-ords on it.
At least +/- 0 90 180 long and 0 45 90 lat

That grid isn't very useful, because it only has 8 subdivisions from equator to pole. So each line is 11.25 degrees apart, not 10.