Stand by for Mars!
I imagine y'all have seen Google Moon by now. But now there's something new: Google Mars, apparently released just in time for Percival Lowell's birthday. (There's also a Google Doodle today in honor of Lowell.)
You can use various coloring schemes, zoom in and out and drag just like in Google Maps (a.k.a. Google Local), and click names of various types of items (like "Mountains" or "Canyons") to get pushpin markers showing where various things are. (I was hoping that "Stories" would show the locations of various famous sf stories that took place on Mars, but no such luck.) Did you know that there's a place on Mars named Arimanes Rupes, after the Zoroastrian Ahriman? (Who the Google Mars blurb refers to as the "classical Persion deity of wickedness"; I suppose that's close enough.) And you can see where various spacecraft landed, and so on. Way nifty. Oh, and of course you can search for places and items on Mars using the search box at the top of the page.
There are also links to articles at the website for THEMIS, the Mars Odyssey Mission's THermal EMission Imaging System; that site has bunches more cool Mars imagery and info.
See the Google Mars FAQ for more info, including a link to a 3D flythrough of Valles Marineris at the THEMIS site.
