Three · Beneath you

The earth.

A place is not a pair of numbers. It has a height, a coast, a climate, a border that has moved, a tide that turns and a horizon that decides when your sun actually rises. This is the layer that knows all of that — for anywhere on Earth, and for several other worlds besides.

Published survey dataBy point, region or plateAny year’s bordersOther worlds

What we measure

Twenty layers.

Every layer is queried by point, by region or by whole plate. It is what turns “my city” into a real place with a height, a shoreline and a climate — and what gives every other page a real horizon to compute against.

Elevationthe height of the ground under a point
Sea bedocean depth and bathymetry
Coastlinewhere land actually meets water
Rivers & lakesinland water, named
Reefscoral and shallow marine structure
Glacierspermanent ice
Borderscountries and their internal divisions
Borders in historythe world as it stood in a chosen year
Citiesby real population, not by fame
Time zonesthe zone that governs a point
Named featurespeaks, capes, passes, valleys
Volcanoesand their status
Faults & platesthe moving structure underneath
Tidesthe turn of the water at a coast
Climate normalstemperature and rainfall through the year
Bioclimatethe full standard set of indicators
Sea surfaceocean temperature
Urban extentwhere the built world reaches
Ports & airportshow a place connects
Other worldsthe Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, the giants, Pluto

Try it

You have already used it.

Type a city into the free sky tool and watch it come back with a real coordinate, a real elevation and the right time zone for that date — that is this layer answering, live, before the sky is computed at all. Every rise and set time on this site is corrected for the height of the ground you are standing on and the horizon it makes.

Inside every app

The quiet layer.

Earth does not need a screen of its own, because it is already running behind all of them. It is what gives the Moon app a real horizon to rise over, Wake the right time zone to fire in, Light the terrain that decides when the sun clears the ridge, and Chores the coast that the sea breeze comes off. Ask any app where you are and this is what answers.

Drawn to order

The map plates.

Earth’s object is the map. A plate is specified rather than picked off a rack: you name the centre, the span, the layers and the house style, and it is drawn to that specification at print resolution. The range is not a list of titles — it is every combination of the three choices below.

South America drawn in the Nocturne house style: coastline, national and internal borders, rivers and a graticule in lit line on a dark ground — South America in the **Nocturne** style — coast, national and internal borders, the river network and the graticule. Every line on it is drawn from the same survey data the twenty layers above are queried from; nothing here is traced, and nothing is a scan. Recentre it, change the span, add or drop layers, pick a different house style, and it is a different sheet entirely — at whatever size it is going to be printed.

A political world map on a light ground: national borders, internal divisions, rivers, lakes and named cities placed by real population — The same renderer, asked for a different job — a reference sheet rather than a wall piece. Borders and internal divisions, the river and lake network, and cities placed and named by real population rather than by importance. Ask for the borders of 1914 and it draws that world instead.

One · What can be drawn

Six kinds of sheet.

Each of these is a plate type, not a title. Every one of them can be centred anywhere, at any span, with the layers you want on it.

The worldborders, coast, cities by real population, at a size that stands up to being printed large
A regionone country, one coast, one range, one city and its surroundings — centre and span are yours to name
Reliefthe land as terrain: shaded hills, hypsometric colour, the sea bed drawn instead of left blank
The world as it wasborders as they stood in a chosen year — a place drawn in the world your subject actually lived in
Other worldsthe same cartography on the Moon and Mars, and the visible faces of Mercury, Venus, the gas giants, Pluto and several moons
The sky as a mapa star chart for one horizon on one night, drawn to the same standard as the ground plates

Two · Six house styles

The same data, six different sheets.

The style is a choice about what the map is for — a wall, a book, a study, a gift. These are six real plates, each one a different region so you can see the style rather than the place. Any style will draw any region.

South America in Nocturne: pale coast and border lines on deep navy — **Nocturne**Dark ground, lit coastline. Made to be read across a room.

The Mediterranean in Carte Noire: gold lines on near-black — **Carte Noire**Gold on black. Minimal ink, nothing on the sheet that has not earned its place.

Asia in Indigo: platinum lines on royal violet — **Indigo**Royal violet ground, platinum line. The warmest of the dark styles.

The Mediterranean in Verdigris: pale green line on deep green — **Verdigris**Deep green with a pale green line — the strongest contrast of the greens.

North America in Olive: warm gold line on near-black olive — **Olive**Near-black with a warm gold line. Quieter than Carte Noire.

The Mediterranean in Sage: olive line on cream — **Sage**The light plate — olive line on cream, for printing on white stock.

At full size

The floor of the ocean, drawn.

Most world maps stop at the waterline and fill the rest with flat blue. The sea bed is a measured surface like any other, so it is drawn like any other — and it holds the most dramatic terrain on the planet. These are cuts from the plate above at its own resolution, nothing sharpened and nothing retouched.

The Mariana Trench and the western Pacific, with Papua New Guinea and the island arcs — **The Mariana Trench**The deepest scar on Earth, and the arc of islands riding above it.

The Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain trailing north-west across the Pacific floor — **Hawaiʻi to the Emperors**One hot spot, and eighty million years of drowned volcanoes trailing north-west.

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge with the Azores, Madeira and the Canaries off the African coast — **Mid-Atlantic Ridge**The Azores sit on the ridge crest; the fracture zones run east–west across it.

The Greenland ice sheet, Iceland, the Faroes and the British Isles above the Reykjanes Ridge — **Greenland to Iceland**The sheet, the caps, and the Reykjanes Ridge running away to the south-west.

The Drake Passage: Tierra del Fuego, the Scotia arc and the Antarctic Peninsula under permanent ice — **Drake Passage** — Tierra del Fuego, the Scotia arc, and the Peninsula under ice. The white is the glacier record, filled as a region rather than shaded as high ground, which is why the ice reads as ice and not as tall land.

Three · Choose the layers

A plate carries only what you put on it.

Everything measured further up this page can be drawn, and anything you leave out is simply not there.

Coast & border
Rivers & lakes
Terrain & sea bed
Cities by population
Named features
Reefs & glaciers
Faults & plates
Urban extent
Ports & airports
Climate shading
Historical borders
A marked place

Specify a plate Cartography at volume →

Build with it

Twenty layers, in your own code.

Forthcoming

Height, sea bed, coast, rivers, borders present and historical, cities by population, time zone, named features, tides, climate normals — by point, by region or as a whole plate, and for other planetary surfaces too. It is the layer most people end up needing once “where” has to mean something more precise than a name.

Point, region or plate — one coordinate, a bounding box, or the drawn sheet
Any year’s borders — the world as it stood, not only as it stands
Named sources — our own index over published survey data, attributable line by line
Other worlds — the same queries against the Moon, Mars and more
Plain JSON — small, flat, boring on purpose; or a drawn plate if you want the sheet
No interpretation — you get the height, not our opinion of the view
Nothing retained — requests are answered and discarded
Stable shapes — fields are added, never renamed under you

Want the layers wired into a map you already publish, a survey tool or a planning system, or built into software of your own? Ask for that instead. And if you have looked at this and concluded it could not be done — not at that resolution, that extent or that volume — bring it here and let us give it a second thought.

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