About 140 million miles away, on a big red rock circling the sun, a little rover by the name of Curiosity is crawling around a barren landscape of stone and silence. But people like to keep track of where their favorite things are. That's why Canadian astronomer Phil Stooke is mapping the mission's every move.

Ever since the Opportunity and Spirit rovers landed on Mars in 2004, Stooke has been creating maps of the routes they follow during their missions. The same goes with Curiosity right now. Every day, Stooke publishes updated maps that give the public a glimpse into where Curiosity has been and where it's going.

"It's a lot of fun," Stooke says. "Every day there are these brand new pictures coming down from space. Every day you can see new landscapes from Mars."

Stooke, who teaches at the University of Western Ontario, doesn't have any quick tricks or secrets for making these maps. He uses publicly available imagery taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been in Martian orbit since 2006. Stooke downloads the images to make his background map. Then, as the rover moves from one place to another, it takes pictures to construct a 360-degree panorama. Stooke compares that panorama with the orbital image to pinpoint the exact location of the rover, and traces Curiosity's movement, step by step.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory makes the same kind of rover maps their own way. But while JPL probably drafts those maps immediately, they're usually not published online until a week later. Stooke, on the other hand, tries to post his immediately. JPL's maps also lack the names of any landmark rock formations or mountains that have just been named—like Pink Cliffs, Whale Rock, or my personal favorite, Dingo Gap—so nonscientist Curiosity groupies trying to keep track of where the tour is going would be better served by sticking to Stooke's maps. He has been told that the people working on the rover missions at NASA actually like his maps, "because they have those place names added."