About Voyager ... Jules Verne Voyager, interactive map tool for the Web

Jules Verne Voyager: About Voyager

About Voyager Index:

Overview

Which Web browser to use?

What's unique about the Voyager map tool?

Acknowledgements

For more information about our Voyager map tool, contact: Lou Estey
(lou

unavco.org)
Last modified: 12 Sep 2005

Overview Jules Verne Voyager is a precision interactive map tool for the World Wide Web, developed at the UNAVCO Boulder (Colorado, USA) Facility. It was originally developed to better visualize the inter-relationships of geophysical and geologic processes, structures, and measurements with high-precision GPS monument data and solutions on Earth.

Voyager works equally well for visualizing other planets and moons, and we are collecting a set of data for most major bodies of the Solar System. See our Solar System Portal or the jules homepage menu for current links.

The user browser interface uses a Java applet, which sends commands to the jules server, where images are produced using the Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) and are then sent back to the user's browser when finished. The creation time for a map is anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or so depending on how complex the final map image is.

This site has been partially funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Which Web browser to use? Voyager uses a Java applet, so Java must be capable on running on your browser and it must be enabled on your browser. We've had the best luck with Netscape 4.5+ (tested to version 7.2), Mozilla 1.0+ (tested to 1.5), Mozilla Firefox 1.0+ (tested to 1.0.2), Opera 6.0+ (tested to 6.05), and Internet Explorer 5.0+ (tested to version 6.0). Exceptions:

every browser tried on Mac OSX 10.x up to 10.4 (Tiger) (e.g. Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, ...):
The MRJ (MacOS Runtime Java), the Mac equivalent of the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) on other systems, does not play nicely. In particular it takes control of Java-specified button foreground and background colors, instead of obeying the settings in the Java byte-code. See Java Choice setBackground method is not implemented consistently in Macintosh OS X (Apple Problem ID#: 2661390). The upshot is that Voyager works, but the applet buttons colors are not displayed correctly on OSX.
Internet Explorer on XP SP2:
If the applet does not start (i.e. you just see a grey background where the applet should be running, and you may get an initialization error), you may have to upgrade your JRE (Java Runtime Environment) to 1.5.0. Go to Sun's Download Java 2 Platform to get J2SE 5.0 (aka JRE 1.5.0).
Blocking pop-ups:
Blocking pop-ups will disable the ability of the Voyager applet to launch new browser pages from the [URL:] choice menu option. Enable pop-ups, at least for our jules.unavco.org site, and you will be OK.
any browser, any operating system, any time:
if you get the top few lines of HTML, horizontal line, text: Sorry; your browser can't currently run Java applets., another horizontal line, and a user ID only: your browser probably is not Java capable
any browser, any operating system, any time:
if you get the top few lines of HTML, horizontal line, text: Sorry; your appears not to be Java-enabled., another horizontal line, and a user ID only: Java is not enabled on your browser (i.e. enable Java, and try again)

It's best if you set your monitor to maximum color capability. The image maps produced by Voyager assume a full 24-bit color palette.

What's unique about the Voyager map tool? There are now many interactive map tools available on the Web (a big increase since 1996 when we started on this site); in fact, we maintain a list of those that we know about at Informations Sources: Other map sites. Here is what we still consider to be the unique aspects of the Voyager map tool:

You can immediately zoom or pan on any local map. (You don't have to change states on the tool, don't have to click a submit button, and so on.)

Your zoom region is totally in your control. This includes being able to do a zoom centered on a pole when starting from the default global map. (You are not restricted to a x2, or x5, or other fixed factor zooms.)

Each zoomed-in map is a Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection, which means the local map region appears very much the way it would if examining a physical globe. (I.e. you are not stuck with highly distorted maps at high latitudes or at the poles.)

You can easily generate a high-quality ' view from space' index map for any zoomed-in map. This also means you can view any dataset as it would appear on a globe from any direction. In fact, sometimes the index maps are the most stunning images you will produce — though they usually take longer to generate.

Using URL extentions, you can be in complete control how your initial Voyager map of any world starts up, including initial zoomed-in or ' view from space' maps, with any initial set of features, and even setting the overall size of the applet map space. (You don't have to go through a laborious menu process to get to where you want to be.)

This is the only Web site that allows you to explore the 1.1 km resolution Face of the Earth ™ texture map of ARC Science Simulations, which is a seamless image of the natural surface colors of the Earth (based on NOAA-11 image data).

For most maps, you are able to download either a raster image (GIF format) or a PostScript file. (The only exception is for maps using ARC's Face of the Earth ™: only the GIF raster image is made available in this case.)

Not unique, but rare: Each world that can be accessed the Voyager Web map tool has a thumbnail overview of the various datasets that can be displayed, e.g. the one for Mars is the Mars Features Help.

Not unique, but rare: It's easy to keep track of new Voyager dataset updates by periodically checking the What's New page.

Not unique, but rare: The Voyager Web map tool uses a GMT engine. As far as we know, it's still the only GMT-powered Web map site that gives you anything close to the above set of user-friendly features, and on a wide variety of worlds.

Acknowledgements In addition to our Informations Sources, special thanks to:

Paul Wessel and Walter Smith for developing GMT and helping us with some problems (without GMT, this site would not have been possible)
Tom Ligon and Pam Patel at ARC Science Simulations for helping us acquire their stunning Face of the Earth ™ data set
Bob Pappalardo (CU Boulder) and Tammy Becker and colleagues (USGS, Flagstaff) for providing us with the latest composite images of the galilean moons (plus Bob's help with technical questions about terminology in the IAU/USGS planetary gazetteer)

Plus:

at the UNAVCO Boulder Facility, for various technical contributions at various times since summer 1997 (our first version of this tool): sys admin: Myron McCallum, Natalie Anderson, Mike Garritano, Mike Miccuci; Java and Perl: Dave Mencin; Web: Jim Riley, Amy Rosewater, Kevin Reitz, Susan Jeffries; UNAVCO database: Fran Boler, David Maggert; city/country name data: Natalie Anderson
all the people in the gmt-help list who help us solve problems, fix bugs, and find workarounds in our use of GMT on this site
all the other great people at NASA, JPL, USGS, NOAA, various universities, and so on who have been working for years to collect and organize all this data
and all the people responsible for UNIX/Linux, Java, Perl, Apache and so on that is also used to make this site possible

Comments, questions, problems about Jules Verne Voyager? Send mail to Lou Estey
(lou

unavco.org)