New Olympus Mons image, 6 km high scarp Options

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Googling ""Olympus Mons Aureole" (with the "") gives a wealth of info on the aureole terrains. most people seems to think they are indeed landslides. But if so, why they cut so preciselly the contour of the volcano? Perhaps at a precise distance of the main crater; the lava flows were cooler, and thus they constructed a less cohesive terrain, landlide prone, where the central terrain is not.


I especially select this one


give extensive details about the evidences of landslides, and how they could have occured, and why they follow the contour of the volcano.

[ljk4-1]

This image of an area near Olympus Mons reminds me of some of the
images of Io taken by Galileo:

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2006/05/07/

[djellison]

Just out of pure curiosity, I found the orig. data for the Ol.Mons MEX image - this is the full res colour image. Obviously, the ESA releases are the higher res ( typically 4x higher res, sometimes a lot more ) ND channel 'colourised' by the lower res colour data attached.

Doug

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Phil Stooke]

Nice one, Doug - look at the cloud shadows! If the sun elevation is known the cloud height can be calculated.

Phil

[djellison]

Unfortunately, ESA being ESA - they've not gone that far....

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[Bob Shaw]

Nice one, Doug - look at the cloud shadows! If the sun elevation is known the cloud height can be calculated.

Phil

Phil:

I can't remember actually noticing *any* cloud shadows on Mars before these - lots of clouds, but no shadows...

...funny, that!

Bob Shaw

[helvick]

Nice one, Doug - look at the cloud shadows! If the sun elevation is known the cloud height can be calculated.

Well from plugging the average time given for the image (2004-11-23 16:11:22) Latitude (20.2913N) and longitude (-230.7915W) into mars 24 I get a Solar Elevation of 53.7deg and Solar Azimuth of 279.9deg if that's any help.

[RNeuhaus]

MOLA proved that Arsia or one of the 3 tharsis volcanoes is a bit higher than Olympus, but Olumpus is much taller above it's base.

Edstrick, I cannot figure out that 3 Tharsis volcans are higher than Olympus and then Olympus is "taller" than Tharis volcanos. Do you refer that the Tharsis volcanos has higher level of surface base than Olympus Mons?

Olympus Mons is the tallest volcan of the solar system and it is the result of billions years of lava acumulation. Hence, the surface around the Olympus Mons has no tectonics plates. This happens the same to the others volcanos sites: Tharsis and Ellysium.

Rodolfo

[helvick]

Well from plugging the average time given for the image (2004-11-23 16:11:22) Latitude (20.2913N) and longitude (-230.7915W) into mars 24 I get a Solar Elevation of 53.7deg and Solar Azimuth of 279.9deg if that's any help.

Hmmh - I measure about 62 pixels between the clouds and their shadows in the middle of the picture. According to the metadata the resolution is approx 90.9m/pixel. With the above solar elevation I get an altitude of around 7.67km above the surface (where the shadow is) for those clouds.

[djellison]

Mars 24 - of COURSE.....stupid me, should have thought of that - I'll get the ND image and see if we can get better values

Doug

[helvick]

Hmmh - I measure about 62 pixels between the clouds and their shadows in the middle of the picture. According to the metadata the resolution is approx 90.9m/pixel. With the above solar elevation I get an altitude of around 7.67km above the surface (where the shadow is) for those clouds.

A quick and dirty look at the MOLA elevation data for this spot on Google Mars puts the area where the shadow is at somewhere around 3km above datum which puts these clouds 10km below the top of Olympus so they are possibly water clouds.

[jaywee]

Unfortunately, ESA being ESA - they've not gone that far....

Just wondering.. couldn't one use the data in SPICE kernels?

[djellison]

Well - the Spice data's going to tell you where it was and which way it was pointing at the time - but we don't really care about that - Mars24 work's quite well - I was wondering how I could find out LMST for any point on Mars given an earth time...and the answer was sat on my HDD all the time

Doug

[edstrick]

"....I can't remember actually noticing *any* cloud shadows on Mars before these - lots of clouds, but no shadows..."

Viking Orbiters repeatly saw an unusual cirrus-like cloud in the southern mid-lattitudes somwhere southwest or southeast of the Gusev landign site, maybe about 45 or so south. It was crisply defined, at exceptionally high altitude, and often cast well defined discrete shadows. (altitude directly measured from shadows... 15 or 25 or something km!) The general expectation was that these were recurring CO2 "cirrus" forming where uplift of mid-latitude jetstream or something similar tended to push the temperature below condensation point.

------------------

"Edstrick, I cannot figure out that 3 Tharsis volcans are higher than Olympus and then Olympus is "taller" than Tharis volcanos. Do you refer that the Tharsis volcanos has higher level of surface base than Olympus Mons? "

Olumpus is tallest, base to peak, as Mauna Kea (Is that the peak on Hawaii?) is the tallest mountain on Earth. MOLA data showed, I'm pretty sure, that one of the Tharsis trio has the highest altitude relative to the martian geoid ("sea" level datum: gravitational equi-potential surface) on Mars. Don't expect the PR geniuses at NASA to get their educational materials up to date and accurate, if only because they aren't the experts on all sorts of gobs of data published in (to them and many of us) obscure locations. Check peer-reviewed primary mission reports in places like Journal of Geophysical Research for the MOLA data.