Arcadia quadrangle

Arcadia quadrangle
Map of Arcadia quadrangle from Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) data. The highest elevations are red and the lowest are blue.
Coordinates47°30′N 90°00′W / 47.5°N 90°W / 47.5; -90
Image of the Arcadia quadrangle (MC-3). The southern part contains the large shield volcano Alba Patera and the highly faulted Tempe Terra province, which includes many small volcanoes.
Location of Arcadia quadrangle. The Arcadia quadrangle is in the northcentral part of the Martian northwestern hemisphere, in the northern part of the Tharsis volcanic province.

The Arcadia quadrangle is one of a series of 30 quadrangle maps of Mars used by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Astrogeology Research Program. The quadrangle is located in the north-central portion of Mars’ western hemisphere and covers 240° to 300° east longitude (60° to 120° west longitude) and 30° to 65° north latitude. The quadrangle uses a Lambert conformal conic projection at a nominal scale of 1:5,000,000 (1:5M). The Arcadia quadrangle is also referred to as MC-3 (Mars Chart-3).[1] The name comes from a mountainous region in southern Greece. It was adopted by IAU, in 1958.[2]

The southern and northern borders of the Arcadia quadrangle are approximately 3,065 km and 1,500 km wide, respectively. The north to south distance is about 2,050 km (slightly less than the length of Greenland).[3] The quadrangle covers an approximate area of 4.9 million square km, or a little over 3% of Mars’ surface area.[4] The region called Tempe Terra is in the Arcadia quadrangle.

Several features found in this quadrangle are interesting, especially gullies which are believed to be caused by relatively recent flows of liquid water. Dark slope streaks and dust devil tracks can have a striking appearance.

  1. ^ Davies, M.E.; Batson, R.M.; Wu, S.S.C. "Geodesy and Cartography" in Kieffer, H.H.; Jakosky, B.M.; Snyder, C.W.; Matthews, M.S., Eds. Mars. University of Arizona Press: Tucson, 1992.
  2. ^ "Planetary Names". planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov. Retrieved 2024-07-26.
  3. ^ "NASA WorldWind".
  4. ^ Approximated by integrating latitudinal strips with area of R^2 (L1-L2)(cos(A)dA) from 30° to 65° latitude; where R = 3889 km, A is latitude, and angles expressed in radians. See: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1340223/calculating-area-enclosed-by-arbitrary-polygon-on-earths-surface.