How it works
A blank Mars map of the whole planet, with north at the top. Twenty-one places are drawn with no name: six volcanoes, a canyon system, two ice caps, nine plains, two craters and a landing site.
Read the full guide
How the flat map works
The planet is unrolled onto a grid of latitude and longitude, so the left and right edges are the same line. Arcadia Planitia is cut by the left edge, and a sliver of it shows at the right. Each pole is stretched along a whole edge, which is why the polar caps are bands.
Names that get swapped
The row of three cones slants up to the right: Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, then Ascraeus Mons. Of the two round patches in the south, Hellas Planitia is the large one and Argyre Planitia the small one. Jezero is the ring beside Isidis Planitia; Gale is the ring farther right, just south of the equator.
- Mons is one mountain and Montes is the plural, so the row of three is the Tharsis Montes.
Questions and answers
Where is longitude 0 on the map of Mars?
Down the middle, with west to the left and east to the right. The Viking 1 site, at about 48 degrees west, sits left of the center line, and Gale crater is far to the right.
Is anything drawn on the Mars map but not named?
Yes. Vastitas Borealis, the lowland plain around the north polar plain, is the band under the north polar cap. Regions such as Tharsis and Arabia Terra are not on the map at all, because they have no edge that could be drawn.
Is the blank map of Mars to scale?
In position, yes. Each feature sits at its latitude and longitude in the gazetteer of the International Astronomical Union. The six volcanoes are drawn larger than life and the two craters as rings, so that they can be found.
Does the blank map of Mars come with an answer key?
Yes. On the key each of the twenty-one places carries its name. The ice caps are written as North polar cap (Planum Boreum) and South polar cap (Planum Australe), so either name can be marked right.