Sunday, April 29, 2012

Tharsis Montes and Olympus Mons


Shaded relief image of Tharsis Montes and Olympus Mons derived from Mars Orbiter Altimeter data which flew on board NASA's Mars Global Surveyor. New data (see M. Beuthe et al., 2012) suggest that Tharsis Montes formed one by one, starting with Arsia Mons, possibly by the movement of a single mantle plume moving under the surface.

Photo credit: NASA; text credit: ESA

Note: For more information, see Mars Express Explores the Roots of Martian Volcanoes.

1 comment:

Ludo said...

Really good blog, and often updated, congratulations!
These super HD photos you display are really making Mars a much closer destination, at least for imagination!
I can't wait to see how much more we will gain from the eyes of Curiosity!

I invite you to take a look at some graphic work I make about Mars and that I show on a dedicated blog called Da Vinci Mars Design. Here is my orbital vision of Olympus Mons :
http://davinci-marsdesign.blogspot.fr/2012/04/olympus-mons-from-orbit.html