What is Olympus Mons?
Olympus Mons, meaning Mount Olympus in Latin, is the largest known mountain and volcano in the solar system. Located on Mars, Olympus Mons is 27 km (15.5 mi) tall, more than three times the height of Mount Everest. Olympus Mons is a shield volcano, which is a large volcano with shallowly-sloping sides formed through the eruption of lava with low viscosity. Because Mars has no active plate tectonics, the Olympus Mons hotspot used to erupt continuously in the same place, slowly building up a bigger and bigger mountain until it became the tallest and widest in the solar system. Being a shield volcano, Olympus Mons is much wider than it is tall. The mountain is 550 km (342 mi) in width, topped by a caldera complex that is 85 km (53 mi) long, 60 km (37 mi) wide, and up to 3 km (1.8 mi) tall. At the top of Olympus Mons, the air density is only 5-8% of that at the surface, contrasted with the top of Mount Everest experiencing about 32% of the air density as found at the Earth’s surface. Becau
Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in our entire solar system. It is a shield volcano, meaning that they have gentle sloping sides that have been built up by lava flow. They are similar to the volcanos found on the island of Hawaii, but is much larger. Olympus Mons is 78,000 feet from the bottom to the top. Its width is 600 km across. You can get an idea on how big Olympus Mons is when compared to the largest volcano on Earth, Mauna Loa in Hawaii (bottom right picture). Mauna Loa is 33,000 feet from bottom to top. This volcano is significant to the study of geology in that Olympus Mons is the largest volcano found in our solar system to date. It was first photographed in the early 1970s, and seems to be very similar to volcanoes found on Earth.
