Sky & Telescope Mars globe

Even the Hubble Space Telescope can't show you all the details found on this new edition of our classic Mars globe. Created with more than 6,000 images taken by the Viking orbiters, our 12-inch globe approximates the planet's true color.

Sky & Telescope has sold beautiful, detailed, and accurate globes of the Moon and planets for many years, and we're proud to bring you this latest version of our Mars globe.

Produced in cooperation with NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, the globe includes official names for 140 features.

For centuries telescopic observers have strained to see faint and fleeting details on the surface of the Red Planet. Which were real — and which imagined? This Mars globe portrays the rich assortment of those enigmatic features — and showcases the intriguing features discovered by NASA spacecraft. Today we know the bright areas on Mars are covered with fine, light-colored sand that gets blown around the planet by winds in its thin atmosphere. The dark areas, however, are not huge expanses of vegetation, as once thought, but instead vast volcanic deposits dating from the planet's early history.