NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter has captured a stunning picture of a 20-kilometer-high volcano, peeping through the clouds on the Red Planet. The image captured from the upper atmosphere at dawn, shows a green haze with Arsia Mons standing roughly twice as tall as Earth's largest volcano, Mauna Loa, located in Hawaii, which rises nine kilometers above the seafloor. At 120 kilometres wide, the Arsia Mons summit caldera is also larger than many volcanoes on Earth.
The panorama image taken on May 2, using the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), shows the planet's massive volcano for the first time. Arsia Mons is the southernmost of the Tharsis volcanoes and cloudiest of the three.
“We picked Arsia Mons hoping we would see the summit poke above the early morning clouds. And it didn't disappoint,” said Jonathon Hill of Arizona State University in Tempe, operations lead for THEMIS.
Researchers said the clouds are especially thick over Arsia Mons when the Red Planet is farthest from the sun, a period called aphelion.
"Understanding Mars' clouds is particularly important for understanding Martian weather and how phenomena like dust storms occur," NASA stated.
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The Odyssey orbiter was launched in 2001 and is regarded as the longest-running mission orbiting another planet. To click the picture, the orbiter rotates 90 degrees while in orbit so that its camera, built to study the Martian surface, can capture it cleanly.
The angle of the camera allows scientists to see dust and water ice cloud layers, enabling them to observe changes over the course of seasons.
“We're seeing some really significant seasonal differences in these horizon images,” said planetary scientist Michael D. Smith of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It's giving us new clues to how Mars' atmosphere evolves over time.”
