Jim Bell
Planetary Scientist
Book Recommendations:
Recommended by Jim Bell
“'In The Atlas of Mars, Coles, Tanaka, and Christensen take us on a comprehensive, informative, and up-to-date tour of the geography and geology of the Red Planet. Focusing on the critical role of impact, volcanic, tectonic, and erosional processes on shaping the history and evolution of Mars, these expert authors do an outstanding job of proving the value of fusing results from the wide variety of remote sensing measurements of Mars from flybys, orbiters, and surface landers/rovers. The Atlas of Mars is an important reference for students and professional planetary scientists as well as an educational and richly illustrated book that many general space enthusiasts will surely enjoy.' Jim Bell, Planetary scientist, author, and editor of The Martian Surface: Composition, Mineralogy, and Physical Properties” (from Amazon)
Planetary scientist and educator Ken Coles has teamed up with Ken Tanaka from the United States Geological Survey's Astrogeology team, and Phil Christensen, Principal Investigator of the Mars Odyssey orbiter's THEMIS science team, to produce this all-purpose reference atlas, The Atlas of Mars. Each of the thirty standard charts includes: a full-page color topographic map at 1:10,000,000 scale, a THEMIS daytime infrared map at the same scale with features labeled, a simplified geologic map of the corresponding area, and a section describing prominent features of interest. The Atlas is rounded out with extensive material on Mars' global characteristics, regional geography and geology, a glossary of terms, and an indexed gazetteer of up-to-date Martian feature names and nomenclature. This is an essential guide for a broad readership of academics, students, amateur astronomers, and space enthusiasts, replacing the NASA atlas from the 1970s.