Olympus Mons (in the past Nix Olympica , of the Latin name of the mount Olympe ) is the most known relief of our Solar system. It is a Volcan shield located on Mars, roughly with 18°N of Latitude and 227°E of Longitude. Before the space probes do not reveal its nature Montagne uses, Olympus Mons was known astronomers like a characteristic at fort Albédo. Giovanni Schiaparelli had initially called this gigantic formation Nix Olympica (“snows of Olympe”, in reference to the Odyssey ).

General description

Located at the North-West of the north-western edge of the Dome of Tharsis, the central building climbs to 27 km above its base (approximately 3 times the height of the Everest compared to the sea level and 3 times the height of the Mauna leasing compared to its base) and to 25 km above the mean level Martian surface. The Volcan is held indeed in a 2 kilometers depth depression. Broad 540 km and flanked Cliff S, it has a Caldeira 85 km length, 60 km of broad and major of 3 km. Six others crater S of collapse smaller come to overlap this one. Will caldeira is complex and attests of an animated history. The first collapse lowered the surface of one kilometer. It left circular faults of extension all around will caldeira, whereas the center was the seat of an intense compression, under the effect of the compressing of the ploughed up mass. The second collapse then intervened, followed by four others. The edge external of the volcano is consisted a 6 km sometimes high and single escarpment at the volcanos Martians.

Olympus Mons is so imposing that a person being held on surface of Mars could not see her entire profile because the curve of planet would mask a part of it. The only means of observing the mountain of only one holding is in Orbite. Same manner, a person being held with the top of the volcano would realize that the slopes of the volcano extend to the horizon and beyond.

A traditional error consists in believing that the top of Olympus Mons is at the top of the Martian atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure at the top is about 2  % of that of Martian surface. By comparison, atmospheric pressure in the summit meeting of the Everest east about 25  % of that observed with the sea level. In spite of that, the airborne dusts are present all the same and a cloud cover of ice of CO₂ is always possible at the top of Olympus Mons. The clouds of water ice cannot on the other hand develop to with it. Although the average Martian atmospheric pressure represents less 1  % of the terrestrial pressure, weakest local gravity makes it possible the atmosphere to much higher extend in altitude.

Volcanicity

Olympus Mons is a volcanic shield, the result of a very fluid lava emerging from the chimneys of the volcano lasting one long period of time. It is thus much wider than high. The average slope of the slopes of the volcano is very gradual. Certain slopes of 5° can suddenly make place with more marked slopes of 10°, even more. In 2004, the Mars Express probe took in photograph on the sides of Olympus Mons of the floods of lava going back to less than 2 million years. The youth of those on a geological scale suggests that the volcano could still be in activity. The islands hawaïennes offer a similar example of volcanic shields to a less scale (see Mauna leasing). The extraordinary size of Olympus Mons is probably due to the fact that Mars is deprived of tectonic plates. Thus, the crust remained fixed on a hot spot and continued to pour lava until reaching this exceptional height.

Surroundings

Olympus Mons is located in the Dôme of Tharsis, immense bulge of Martian surface supporting many volcanos. Among them, a chain of shields of which Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons and Ascraeus Mons, which only appears small compared with Olympus Mons. The immediate surroundings of Olympus Mons are a 2 depth km depression. Their age is not known with exactitude, but one can advance an age of 700 million years for Arsia Mons, 300 million years for Pavonis Mons, between 100 and 20 million years for Ascraeus Mons.

The volcano is surrounded by an area called the Aureole of Olympus Mons, with immense edges and blocks extending up to 1000 km from the top. This highlights the development and the modification of surface related to the glacial activity. The escarpment and the Aureole are both evil known. In theory this base-cliff was consisted landslides and the Aureole consists of materials piled up with the bottom of these slips.

Nix Olympica

Nix Olympica is the first name allotted to Olympus Mons by the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli and its successors when they undertook to chart the Planet Mars as from the 19th century well before Martian forwardings of the 21e century such as Mars Global Surveyor. They used a nomenclature putting back on the Albédo elements observed since the Ground.

In the case of Olympus Mons, the term Nix Olympica refers to the snow-covered aspect of this zone. The word “the nix” indeed means “snow” in Latin. One referred here to snows of Olympe. It is known today that it is because of the clouds which cling to its (very high) top but at the time one did not know with certainty that it was about a mountain.

On the images radar of the probe To marinade 9, the astronomers initially saw a dark spot which made it possible to the astronomers to identify it like one of the highest points of planet. It is by analyzing on computer the images of this zone that they discovered the craters overlapping (will caldeiras) and understood that they dealt with old volcano. The link was established with Nix Olympica which became the Olympe mount, Olympus Mons according to the official terminology in Latin.

Today, the two names Nix Olympica and Olympus Mons are authorized. However, only the second name is used in the scientific publications.

Fiction

See also: Mars in fiction

• In the televised series Exosquad , Olympus Mons is the seat of a battle between the contingent Able and the hero of the series Phaeton , leader of the Néosapiens .

• In the Martian trilogy of Kim Stanley Robinson, Olympus Mons is the site of an annual festival. In its work the Martians , the escarpment is used as scene with a epic climbing, in the news entitled Mars green (Green Mars) the . The author, impassioned excursions in mountain, pushes the direction of the detail until including charts and very precise illustrations of this rise.
• In Ilium (Romance) and Olympos of daN Simmons, Olympus Mons is the seat of the Olympian Divinités. In the saga Hypérion of the same author, it is the head office of the ECMO (military School of command of Olympus), where the soldiers of are trained the FORCE (the powerful army of hegemony).
• the novel Mars in the shades sisters ( has double shadow ) published in 1978 by the poet Frederick Turner tells a Martian mythology with gods living at the top of the Olympe mount (called Nix Olympica) and intervening in the human businesses. In the novel of Turner, the drafting of this mythology is penitence that an embarked poet on board a forwarding of terraformation of the planet Mars inflicts itself, after having caused a fatal accident.

See too

External bond