by: Rick Johnson 
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
RikJohnson@juno.com
Back to the Atlas main page.
Back to the Contents page.
As mentioned on the Index page, I started out with a plan. I had three maps, the Burroughs, the Schaperelli/Lowell Map that Burroughs would have used and the recent Mars MOLA map from NASA.
My belief is that John Carter was NOT a cartographer but an adventurer, so when he said that “*** is ****haads north of ***” he was being general in the same way that I am when I say that “Phoenix is 125 miles north of Tucson” The truth is that we in Tucson refer to going ‘north’ to Phoenix only because I-10 leaves Tuicson, heads generally north then shoots NW to that city. Also the 125 miles is an estimate as from my exit in Tucson to the exit I usually take in Phoenix is actually 100 miles by odometer. But both exits are not at the center nor the edges of each city so distance varies depending on what you measure from.
So I assume that Carter was being general and not exact.
Next I assume that due to optical and program distortions, both the Lowell and NASA maps, though excellent, are flawed. The former was through a telescope with the astronomer squinting and ruining his eyes while he tries to draw what he sees. The latter based on a computer program written by someone who had a view to show. For example, early photos of mars showed a pink sky so the programmers simply reprogrammed the computer to change the colors to show the sky as blue. It wasn’t! But that disn’t stop the programmers from making the computer change the pictures to fit their view of what Mars should be.
Thus I have no choice to distort them to fit with each other. Interestingly enough, aside from rotating the equator on the MOLA map by a few degrees and stretching the Lowell map at places, the fit was fairly well between the three. This was proven by later people asking “where is ***?” When I referred to my Burroughs map for the general location, then the MOLA map for details in that area, I was often able to find exactly what I needed. The Face of Mars, nka the Face of Tur being an example.
First of all, we take the Burroughs map as our source. Note that there are a number of places located but many more ignored. Also note that Zodanga was moved from one location to another. This is similar to someone drawing a map of Arizona based on my descriptions and placing Phoenix exactly 125 miles north of Tucson, then later finding that it was actually about 100 miles nw. Thus although this map is our source, it may be considered to be an approximate and not fully accurate.
This is one of the maps used by Lowell and presumably by Burroughs. Note the dark areas, the canali and how most of the lines come from the north. This fits with the modern knowledge that the northern icecap is stable in size but the southern icecap varies.
Here you see the MOLA map with my notes. Den Valdron pioneered this by locating the Artolian Hills, Gathol and Toonol Marshes. I was forced to skew the MOLA equator. But consider that a NASA computer glitch.
Here I printed the MOLA map in black & white and began to trace the seabeds. The fact that they seemed to fit with the Burroughs descriptions helped convince me I was on the right track.
This is the map I came up with after removing MOLA and looking over the result. Then I compared this map to the Burroughs map and made whatever adjustments I needed to fit the novels.
From here I looked over the Lowell map to determine where the waterways would go. I suspect that the ones I mapped were only the major ones and that there may be smaller ones as well that were abandoned and filled in as the cities were reduced in number.
And here is the final result.
One more example is the North Pole. Here is what MOLA says.
Here is what I came up with based on MOLA and Burroughs. You see the Pankor and Okar nations and the Carrion Caves.
Back to the Atlas main page.
Back to the Contents page.
To contact me or to request topics to be covered, send to RikJohnson@juno.com
by: Rick Johnson
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
