Seven Wonders of the Rocky Planets and Their Moons
Earth's Mountains Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth It sits on the border between Nepal and Tibet to the north of India The peak of Mount Everest is 5 5 miles or 29,029 feet 8 9 kilometers above sea level Humans exploring it often have to carry oxygen with them The air at that height does not have enough oxygen in it for people to breathe easily The biggest mountain on Earth however is located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean It is a volcano called Mauna Loa part of the island of Hawaii The whole island is really a big volcanic mountain rising from the ocean floor Mauna Kea is the mountain’s tallest peak Mount Everest reaches the highest point on Earth more than 5 miles 8 km above sea level
This satellite image shows the Big Island of Hawaii It contains both Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa the tallest and biggest mountains on Earth At first glance Mauna Kea may not seem like a very tall mountain It is only about 13,800 feet 4,205 meters above sea level This is 16,000 feet 4,875 m lower than the peak of Mount Everest Most of Mauna Kea is underwater though Measured from its base on the seafloor Mauna Kea is actually more than 32,000 feet 9,750 m high Measured from base to peak Mauna Loa is by far the tallest mountain Another of Hawaii’s mountains Mauna Loa is the largest mountain on Earth Its base is more than 90 miles 145 km across It contains almost 20,000 cubic miles 80,000 cu km of material This is twenty times the size of Mount Everest Mauna Loa is so big and heavy that the mountain has actually bent Earth’s crust beneath it Olympus Mons gianT olyMPus Mons But as big as these mountains are Olympus Mons dwarfs them both It is fifteen times more massive than Mauna Loa Its summit soars an unbelievable 17 miles 27 km above the surrounding plains This is three times higher than Mount Everest Its base is 342 miles 550 km across On Earth Olympus Mons would entirely cover the state of Missouri 9
This false color image uses color to show the different elevations on the Martian surface Olympus Mons is the large silver area Seven Wonders of the Rocky Planets and Their Moons During the four hundred years since 1610 when astronomers first studied Mars through telescopes no one suspected that Mars had such a huge mountain Astronomers thought that Mars was a much older world than Earth They thought that if it had ever had high mountains they would have long ago eroded worn down by wind and water They expected Mars to be a world of flat dusty deserts with a few low rolling hills In 1971 the Mariner 9 spacecraft went into orbit around circled Mars It took the first good close-up photos of the planet Scientists were disappointed by these first pictures The clouds of a vast dust storm buried the surface of Mars The planet looked as featureless as a tennis ball Then scientists noticed four dark spots in the blank cloud cover They realized that the spots must be the tops of vast mountains To rise above the dust cloud these mountains had to be higher than any others then known in the entire solar system Hints of craters in the centers of the spots suggested that all four mountains might be enormous volcanoes FACTS ABOUT 141 million miles 228 million km Mars Diameter width 7,520 miles 12,103 km Average Distance from the Sun Length of Year 687 Earth days Length of Day 1,029 Earth days 10
The MounTains That Weren’t There Astronomers thought that if Mars had mountains they would likely have snow on their peaks just as the highest mountains on Earth do The snow would look like tiny bright spots through the astronomers telescopes Sure enough astronomers discovered several small bright spots near the south pole of Mars These spots appeared in the same place year after year so astronomers thought that they were the tops of mountains They named them the Mountains of Mitchel below after Ormsby Mitchel the astronomer who first saw them in the first half of the nineteenth century But when the first space probes visited Mars they found no mountains at the south pole The famous Mountains of Mitchel turned out to be large patches of white frost that be large patches of white frost that appear every year in the same place appear every year in the same place Top Mariner 9 was the first spacecraft to take good close-up photos of Mars Bottom This Mariner 9 photograph from 1971 shows Olympus Mons standing above a dust storm on the Martian surface
