Planetary Science Institute

2007 Global MGS-TES Thermal Inertia Maps

Supercede the 2003 map

PSI Thermal Inertia Web Site

This site contains downloadable thermal inertia maps derived from Mars Global Surveyor Thermal Emission Spectrometer observations of the surface temperatures of Mars taken over three Mars-years from orbit 1583 to 24346.  These maps are also available via the PDS at http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/mgs/tes-timap.html.   See note below for proper referencing.

See also 2007 Albedo Maps and 2007 Thermophysical Unit Maps

Similarly to the 2003 map, the data used in these maps is derived from TES thermal bolometer temperature observations. Nightside (southbound) and dayside (northbound) maps are included and each has been infilled between 87 degrees south and 87 degrees north latitude. An interpolation mask is provided for each map which identifies those pixels where the map has been infilled by interpolation (less than 8% of the total surface area in each case). If the interpolated pixels are not desired for your application, remove them by multiplying the thermal inertia map by the associated interpolation mask.

In this version, a revised thermal model was used to generate a new lookup table, which now allows the calculation of thermal inertia between 5 and 5000 tiu*. A revised interpolation algorithm was employed, with improved resolution for ancillary data and near-observation-time opacity mapping. Unlike the previous nighttime-only maps, the polar regions of the nightside map include observations from seasons when the sun was above the horizon throughout the day.

* tiu = J m-2 K-1 s-½   (see derived SI unit proposal).

FORMAT
NIGHTSIDE
DAYSIDE
BINARY MAP FILE (50 MB)
NIGHT THERMAL INERTIA
DAY THERMAL INERTIA
LARGE JPEG MAP IMAGE (2.3 MB)
NIGHT THERMAL INERTIA
DAY THERMAL INERTIA
SMALL JPEG MAP IMAGE (0.3 MB)
NIGHT THERMAL INERTIA
DAY THERMAL INERTIA
BINARY MASK FILE (25 MB)
NIGHT INTERPOLATION MASK
DAY INTERPOLATION MASK
PERCENT GLOBAL COVERAGE
92.4%
93.6%

In addition, here is a new color table that we've been using for displaying thermal inertia maps (see JPEGs). If applied logarithmically over 5-5000 tiu, the colors remain nearly the same in the prior map range (24-800 tiu), with brown replacing white and white moved to 5000 tiu. Magenta has been added at the low end (5 tiu). This table may be read in IDL with " LOADCT,1,FILE='ilogcolor.tbl' ".

LOG COLOR TABLE (32KB)

Specifications:

Example: If you are using IDL, you can read the thermal inertia file via

If you are running on a platform which is byte-swapped relative to Sun (e.g., Intel-based PC or Mac):

The following IDL code can be used to display the map:

IDL CODE FOR THERMAL INERTIA MAP DISPLAY (12KB)

Run with any of these IDL commands:

Please cite the following article, in which these maps appear as Figure 8:


Contact:
        Nathaniel E. Putzig
        Planetary Science Institute
        1546 Cole Blvd, Suite 120
        Lakewood, CO 80401
        Email: nathaniel @ putzig.com
        Tel: 720-549-8836