Magma
magma (matplotlib — van der Walt & Smith)
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#000004 -
#2d1161 -
#721f81 -
#b73779 -
#f1605d -
#feb078 -
#fcfdbf
A synthetic demo grid, classed with equal intervals — the point is the palette against real basemap ink, not the data. Switch themes to see how much basemap the palette leaves room for.
Metadata
Provenance
Magma is one of the three colormaps Nathaniel Smith and Stéfan van der Walt built alongside viridis for matplotlib 2.0, released into the public domain under CC0. It runs black through deep purple and red to a pale cream, with lightness rising linearly the whole way — the same design constraint as viridis, applied to a warm hue path. The authors ask for credit but impose no legal restriction.
When to use it
The warm counterpart to viridis: use it where the dark end should read as absence and the bright end as intensity — night lights, heat, activity. It reads well on dark map styles, where its black low end merges into the basemap and only the data-rich areas glow. On light styles the bottom classes go nearly invisible; if that matters, use inferno or reverse the ramp.
License
CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication) · source
The color specification carries this license, which is separate from the MIT license on this site. See attribution.