New images show the magnitude of the largest volcano in the solar system
The European Space Agency (ESA) has published new images taken by the spacecraft Mars Express satellite That show evidence of landslides and the turbulent past around the solar system’s most spectacular volcano: Olympus Mons.
Mars is home to the largest volcanoes in the entire solar system, the tallest being Olympus Mons. Originally seen by NASA’s Mariner 9 spacecraft, it measures about 13.6 miles high at its summit, about 2.5 times taller than Mount Everest when measured from sea level.
Above is an old image of Olympus Mons as taken by the Mars Express spacecraft (which has been orbiting Mars since 2003), but it can be difficult to comprehend its full scale from such an image. like A pure volcanoThe slopes of Olympus Mons usually rise only a few degrees at a time, and so are spread across a truly gigantic area – they cover an area larger than the entire Hawaiian volcano chain.
New images of the area, including the Yalova crater and the much larger crater known as Lycus Sulci, provide not only details of how the area has changed over time, but also a level of scale to just how massive Olympus Mons is.
Terrain colors represent terrain and elevation, from blue lows through orange-red, high-red to high peaks of white. The region marked by the bold white rectangular box indicates the region imaged by the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera on January 18, 2023 during orbit 24056. The smaller white square shows the region featured in these new Mars Express images. | NASA/MGS/MOLA Science Team
(a) A feature highlighting the truly massive proportions of Olympus Mons can be seen to the right of the frame at Yelwa Crater. Although dwarfed by the vast Lycus Sulci crater, it is more than 8 kilometers in diameter, and is close to the height of Mount Everest. above sea level. says the European Space Agency.
“Yelwa crater is located more than 1,000 kilometers from the summit of Olympus Mons, which shows how devastating landslides travel from the sides of the volcano before settling.”
New views of the area give scientists a better idea of the history of this giant volcano, and there is evidence that the lower sides of Olympus Mons collapsed about 100 million years ago.
“Large amounts of lava once flowed down the volcano, triggering landslides that collapsed on its sides to meet the underlying rocks – in this case, the underlying rocks containing ice and water,” explains the European Space Agency.
“The superheated lava caused this ice to melt and become unstable; as a result, the rocky ledge of Olympus Mons broke off and partly slid away. This collapse came in the form of massive rockslides and landslides, which slid downward and spread widely across the surrounding plains.
Over time, as these landslides moved away from the volcano, they became compressed and stretched as they traveled across the surface, which is responsible for the patterns that appear in the new images of the area.
What can be seen from these images shows that although there are distinct differences between the topography or Earth and Mars, how the volcanoes age there shows similarities. Similar landslides, though certainly on a smaller scale, can be seen on volcanic islands such as Hawaii and the Canary Islands.
These images were taken using the Mars Express’ HRSC Camera, or High Resolution Stereo Camera. This system is capable of imaging the entire planet in full color, in 3D, with a resolution of about 10 metres.
Source link
