We have in the past shown you how to turn Google Earth into various other planets including Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. Several of the models come from the Barnabu blog by James Stafford, who also created a comparison of the solar system’s moons, which we covered in 2007.
Now you can explore a number of the solar system’s planets and moons using imagery courtesy of NASA and USGS, which has been published on the Google Maps Gallery by the SETI Institute.
Simply pick a map from here then click the ‘View in Google Earth’ button at the lower right. Turn off any distracting Google Earth layers. Also note that many of the maps have multiple layers that can be turned on or off in Google Earth.
Jupiter’s Moon Io.
Topographic map of Venus.
About Timothy Whitehead
Timothy has been using Google Earth since 2004 when it was still called Keyhole before it was renamed Google Earth in 2005 and has been a huge fan ever since. He is a programmer working for Red Wing Aerobatx and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.
Does the earth have purple on it ?
J, the colours you see are not real, rather they are just a scale of colour assigned to an image of the land elevation.. often blues are low height, greens yellow reds – medium, and then purples and white for the highest mountains..
Great discovery by Google. I like this project powered by Google Map .