The project should be treated as being in an alpha state.

The current aim of the project is to build a map server dedicated to providing map layers for the surfaces of known astral bodies, such as the Sun, the planets and the various non-man-made satellites.

The data the project depends on should be of an open nature, whether that is public domain, creative commons or an alternative license that allows use in a non-commercial context.

The current design assumption of the project is to provide a collection of JSON files that indicate the location of the source map data, along suitable metadata and then have a script that fetches the source map data and then via a script prepare the content for distribution.

This is still very much a work in progress and not ready for deployment.

The comparison should be more to OpenStreetMap and not Google Map, but for other astral bodies. The idea is create an open platform that anyone in the community can benefit from, and contribute to. We may not all be scientists, but to get people engaged and interested is important. Part of that is by reducing the barrier of entry to the data that is already out there and another part is allowing anyone to contribute to improving what is already there, and finally to create a discussion.

The current philosophy is to be agnostic from any hosting platform, but eventually we foresee scripts to allow you deploy to the platform of your choice.

See the README for the installer for details.

This is a project that is being done in available time and is not sponsored. If you would like to contribute or collaborate in any way, then the best place to start is on the OpenPlanetMaps channel on Gitter.

You should note that the intial author is not a cartographer, so everything up to here is based on a best effort. If you feel you can improve and correct, then please do so.

Code is released using the MIT license.

Data should be treated as public domain, unless otherwise specified.

Please attribute as appropriate, and if we forgot to attribute something please let us know.