In the latest iteration of xkcd’s series of bad map projections, Randall puts Kansas—the putative centre of the contiguous 48 states—at the edge of the map.
xkcd: ‘Exterior Kansas’
Quantum Navigation
Quantum navigation systems are being tested in Britain. Last month there was a successful test flight of an aviation system, and a system is being tested on test trains on the London Underground. (It’s not clear to me whether these systems are related, but the U.K. has apparently been making a big push into quantum tech lately.) Quantum navigation is essentially quantum mechanics applied to dead reckoning, using the properties of supercool atoms to measure change of position. The advantage of the system is that it’s self-contained: it doesn’t require a GPS signal or navigation beacon to triangulate from, which makes it resistant to jamming or spoofing—and considering how essential real-time location data has become, and how easy it is to disrupt location signals, the appeal of a self-contained solution is self-evident.
Islario, an Atlas of Islands
Islario, Alejandro Polanco’s latest Kickstarter project, is a collection of 16th- to 19th-century maps of islands—some real, some phantom. “In Spanish, the word ‘islario’ means something like a “compendium of islands’ or an ‘atlas of islands’. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, many ‘islarios’ were created, books that contained only maps of islands. Since the traces used to draw these maps were often based on legends or comments from sailors in ports, the problem of distinguishing between real and fantastic islands arose.” In this blog post (in Spanish), Alejandro takes a look at one of the fantastic islands his book will cover: Frisland.
2024 Olympics Maps
A roundup of maps of venues and facilities for the 2024 Paris Olympics from competitive swimming website Swim Swam; the maps are small and mostly sourced from social media. The map on the Paris 2024 website is interactive, comprehensive and confusing: a case of doing everything but nothing well.
Topo and Trail Maps Coming to Apple Maps in iOS 18/macOS Sequoia
Topographical maps and hiking maps are coming to Apple Maps on the Mac, iPhone and iPad as of macOS Sequoia and iOS/iPadOS 18, due out this fall. The hiking maps will be at least for U.S. national parks, and will also be available in offline mode because hiking in areas without cell service is the point. Other features coming to Maps include custom walking routes and saved places. [Spatially Adjusted]
China Accused of Erasing Uyghur Names from Villages in Xinjiang
Human Rights Watch accuses Chinese authorities of systematically renaming Uyghur villages in Xinjiang in a way that erases references to Uyghur religion, history or culture. According to their research, about 3,600 of 25,000 villages in Xinjiang were renamed between 2009 and 2023. “About four-fifths of these changes appear mundane, such as number changes, or corrections to names previously written incorrectly. But the 630, about a fifth, involve changes of a religious, cultural, or historical nature.” [BBC News]
OpenStreetMap Is Dealing with Some Vandalism
It seems OpenStreetMap has had to deal with a wave of vandalism attacks lately. If you see some nonsense on OSM, this post on their community forum outlines what to do about it (it may have already been taken care of even if it’s still appearing, so check for that; also, don’t post screencaps, because propagating the nonsense is what the vandals want). The OSM ops team provided this update on Mastodon today: “OpenStreetMap is now stronger with improved monitoring, automatic blocking, and respectful limits on new accounts. The default osm.org map is now quicker at fixing large-scale vandalism. Offline actions are also progressing.”
Google Timeline: Location History Moves to On-Device Storage
More details emerged this week on how Google Maps is changing how it stores users’ location data—which is that as of December 2024 it basically won’t: Location History has been rebranded Google Timeline and will be stored on-device, where you can set it to auto-delete after a specified period of time, rather than on Google’s servers. Not having your location data in the cloud is better for your personal security (Google can’t respond to geofence warrants if it doesn’t collect and store location data), but it also means that Timeline won’t be available via the web. This is a bit more definitive than what I understood it to be last December. See news coverage from 9to5Google, The Guardian and The Verge.
The Geochron, and How One Was Restored
The Geochron has been around since the mid-sixties and I only just learned about it this week. It’s an analog, electromechanical world clock and map. The backlit, translucent map is motorized: it scrolls from left to right to indicate the rotation of the earth. Noon is at the centre of the map. The terminators actually change to reflect the change in seasons, as does the position of the overhead sun, which moves in an analemma: these are physical objects behind the map that block the light and are geared to run on an annual cycle. Again: this thing is electromechanical.
The mind boggles, and not just at the (current) mid-four-figures price tag—which is to say that they’re still making these things. (They also have a digital version you can plug into a 4K TV [Amazon] which at $500 seems expensive for what it is. But then the Geochron itself always was. These things have never been anything other than executive- or installation-grade luxury goods.)
Anyway, Matthew Dockrey of Attoparsec managed to lay hands on a used one from the eighties and went through the process of restoring it—replacing worn parts, updating the maps and so forth—and documented it in this 21-minute video. [MetaFilter]
Better Lunar Mapping Through Semi-Automated Photoclinometry
A method to improve the accuracy of maps of the lunar surface was published last month in The Planetary Science Journal. Photoclinometry, also known as shape-from-shading, can dramatically improve the resolution of digital elevation models generated from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data, but it’s apparently rather labour-intensive. From the Brown University press release: “The scholars outline in the study how advanced computer algorithms can be used to automate much of the process and significantly heighten the resolution of the models. The new software gives lunar scientists the tools to create larger maps of the Moon’s surface that contain finer details at a much faster pace, the researchers say.” [Universe Today]
Choosing Colours
On the ArcGIS Blog, Heather White has a series of video-tutorial posts exploring how to choose colour1 when making maps, and what colours can signify on a map. From Color connotations and associations: “Colors are never neutral. They affect how people think and feel about your map. As a cartographer, you should be aware of the connotations and associations carried by the colors you use. They can be powerful tools to help you communicate more clearly. But if you ignore them, they can just as easily sabotage your map’s message.” See also Light and dark color schemes and Choose similar colors to map similar things (which you’d think would go without saying, but then things that ought to go without saying almost always need saying).
CBC News on Russian GPS Jamming
CBC News reports on GPS jamming by Russia, which has closed the airport in Tartu, Estonia until authorities could install a backup ground-based beacon. Russia has been accused of messing with GPS signals for years, but the CBC report focuses on the idea that in this case the jamming is at least in part to deal with Ukrainian drone attacks—the implication being that insofar as Estonia is concerned, this is collateral damage (to which Russia is presumably indifferent at best).
See also the BBC News story from earlier this month (previously).
New Leventhal Exhibition: ‘Heaven and Earth: The Blue Maps of China’
A new exhibition at the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center, Heaven and Earth: The Blue Maps of China, focuses on two extraordinary Chinese maps from the early 19th century printed using Prussian blue pigment.
These maps were presented in an extraordinary format, on eight vertical sheets printed in the style of rubbings. Even more strikingly, they were rendered in a rich blue coloring. The pigment Prussian blue had recently begun to be produced in China, and these maps were amongst the first printed objects in East Asia to make use of the colorant—predating the famous use of Prussian blue by Japanese print artists soon after.
The blue maps were more than just visually astonishing. They also captured Chinese ideas about the relationship between terrestrial and celestial space, and still provide insight today into how Chinese scholars and artists conceptualized the world around them. Beautiful and powerful in equal measure, these blue maps capture details of a transitional moment in the history of China—and the wider world. This exhibition considers these two maps in the context of their production, consumption, and functionality, revealing them as unique objects in the global history of mapmaking.
The online version is full of interesting detail about the maps’ materials and production. The physical exhibition opened last weekend and runs until 31 August 2024. Free admission.
Canada’s Early Wildfire Season
Another year, another map from the European Space Agency showing the extent of Canada’s wildfires based on data from the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite. It’s not nearly as bad as last year’s, but it’s way earlier. The above is a frame from an animated map showing carbon monoxide concentrations earlier this month. “The extremely high concentrations, depicted in dark shades of orange, can be linked to active fires during this time period.”
Previously: Two Ways to Visualize Canada’s Wildfires.
The Aurora Seen from Space
A view of the aurora borealis from space, captured by the VIIRS instrument aboard the Suomi NPP satellite at 3:20 am CDT on 11 May 2024. NASA Earth Observatory:
The VIIRS day-night band detects nighttime light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe signals such as city lights, reflected moonlight, and auroras.
In this view, the northern lights appear as a bright white strip across parts of Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan. But auroras are dynamic, and different coverage and patterns of light would have been visible at other times of the night. And while these satellite data are shown in grayscale, viewers on the ground saw colors from green (the most common) to purple to red. Atmospheric compounds found at different altitudes influence an aurora’s color.
It boggles the mind a bit that by imaging the aurorae from above, with city lights visible and states and lakes outlined, what we kind of have, above, is a map of the aurorae—at least at a single moment in time.