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Concept
Olympus Mons
Summary
Olympus Mons (pronəˌlɪmpəs_ˈmɒnz,_oʊˌ-; Latin for Mount Olympus) is a large shield volcano on Mars. It is over 21.9 km (13.6 mi or 72,000 ft) high, as measured by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA), and is about two and a half times Mount Everest's height above sea level. It is one of Mars's largest volcanoes, its tallest planetary mountain, and is approximately tied with Rheasilvia as the tallest mountain currently discovered in the Solar System. It is associated with the Tharsis Montes, a large volcanic region on Mars. It last erupted 25 million years ago.
Olympus Mons is the youngest of the large volcanoes on Mars, having formed during Mars's Hesperian Period with eruptions continuing well into the Amazonian. It has been known to astronomers since the late 19th century as the albedo feature Nix Olympica (Latin for "Olympic Snow"), and its mountainous nature was suspected well before space probes confirmed it as a mountain.
It is in Mars's western hemisphere, centered at , just off the northwestern edge of the Tharsis bulge. Its western portion is in the Amazonis quadrangle (MC-8), and its central and eastern portions in the adjoining Tharsis quadrangle (MC-9).
Two impact craters on Olympus Mons have been assigned provisional names by the International Astronomical Union: the Karzok crater () and the Pangboche crater (). They are notable as two of several suspected source areas for shergottites, the most abundant class of Martian meteorites.
As a shield volcano, Olympus Mons resembles the shape of the large volcanoes making up the Hawaiian Islands. The edifice is about wide. Because the mountain is so large, with complex structure at its edges, allocating a height to it is difficult. Olympus Mons stands above the Mars global datum, and its local relief, from the foot of the cliffs which form its northwest margin to its peak, is over (a little over twice the height of Mauna Kea as measured from its base on the ocean floor). The total elevation change from the plains of Amazonis Planitia, over to the northwest, to the summit approaches .
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