Topography of the shield volcano, Olympus Mons on Mars

Olympus Mons, one of the largest known shield volcanoes in the Solar System, covers an area of >3.2 × 10⁵ km²and has a diameter of >600 km, excluding its vast aureole deposits. The structure is five times larger than the largest shield volcano on the Earth. It is situated on the north-west flank of the Tharsis volcanic region, a broad topographic rise on the martian surface. The volcano has three physical subdivisions: the summit caldera, the terraced upper flanks, and the lower flanks, which terminate in a scarp 2-10 km high that nearly surrounds the structure. A large block of images of the Tharsis region, including Olympus Mons, was obtained by the Viking mission¹. Here we present a topographic map of Olympus Mons, compiled using various combinations of stereo pairs of these images, together with stereoscopic perspective views generated by image processing techniques.