Celestially-Inspired Maps

[Coriolis]

I was taking my kids to the local planetarium yesterday, and as we watched a show on the night sky, it struck me that the Milky Way could serve as a basis for an interesting height map. I ran it through my usual GIMP/WILBUR routine and came up with an interesting, but rather lumpy, result. Since most people don't recognize the Milky Way in its complete glory, I took a second crack at the technique with the Andromeda Galaxy and used some different filters to work out some of the tiny star bumps without blurring things as much. These maps aren't for any project or competition, they're just maps for the love of cartography.


The Milky Way Islands



The Andromeda Archipeligo