![]() ![]() Ascreaus Mons has a central caldera that is 2.1 miles deep. This volcano on Mars is the tallest of the three volcanoes known as the Tharsis Montes, which appear in a straight line near Olympus Mons. Scientists aren’t quite sure how the ridge formed, but they have hypothesized that it was either the remnant of the moon’s earlier oblate shape, icy material pushed up from beneath the moon’s surface or even the remainder of a collapsed ring. The second is an equatorial ridge, with some peaks reaching over 12 miles high, that makes Iapetus look like a walnut. The first is a huge crater that gives the moon the appearance of the Death Star from Star Wars. Saturn’s moon of Iapetus has a couple of weird features. ![]() (3) Equatorial Ridge of Iapetus – 12.4 miles Rheasilvea Mons sometimes gets named the tallest peak in the solar system, but even with satellites and spacecraft monitoring faraway planets, moons and asteroids, measuring these things is rather difficult (which should explain why the numbers for heights given here may differ from what you’ve seen elsewhere–sources often disagree). The asteroid is currently the subject of a close study by the spacecraft Dawn, which will continue to circle it through the first half of 2012 before moving on for a rendezvous with the asteroid Ceres in 2015. Rheasilvea, on the asteroid Vesta, sits at the center of a 300-mile wide crater. They can get this big because, unlike on Earth, there are no plate tectonics on Mars that can drag a volcano away from its hotspot–they just sit in one volcanically active place and grow bigger and bigger. ![]() The volcanoes in this area are all 10 to 100 times bigger than Earth’s largest volcanoes. Olympus Mons is located near three other volcanoes known as the Tharsis Montes. Measuring 374 miles in diameter, it covers about the same amount of land as the state of Arizona. The largest volcano on Mars is also the solar system’s tallest mountain. And when you start looking at the tallest (known) mountains in the solar system, Mount Everest, at only 2.3 to 2.9 miles tall (depending on where you decide the mountain’s base is located), doesn’t even make the list: They’d be wrong–Everest is the highest peak on the planet, but mountains are measured from their base to their peak, and Everest’s base sits far above sea level on the Tibetan Plateau. If asked to name the tallest mountain on Earth, most people would answer Mount Everest. ![]()
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