Volcanoes on Venus

NASA image from Pioneer-Venus orbiter.

Three Large Volcanoes Volcanic features are abundant on the surface of Venus and are presumably the source of the sulfuric acid in the Venus atmosphere. This image was formed from altimetry data from the Pioneer-Venus Orbiter. Simulated color is used to enhance small-scale structure. The simulated hues are based on color images recorded by the Venera 13/14 landing craft. The twisting bright features that cross the globe from the lower left toward the upper right are the highly fractured mountains and canyons of the eastern highland of Aphrodite Terra. Just to the right of center is the Atla region, dominated by three large volcanoes: Sapas, Maat and Ozza Montes. The image was produced by the Solar System visualization project and the Magellan Science team at the JPL Multimission Image Processing Laboratory. Higher resolution view of Sapas Mons

NASA image from Magellan spacecraft.

The volcanoes of Venus take unusual shapes, but they are all classified as "shield volcanoes" like those which occur in Hawaii. Using the high resolution of the side-looking radar, thicknesses for some of the features could be obtained from the Magellan data. Parallax measurements show that the thickness of the lobe of lava at the left-center edges of the image is variable but typically about 540 meters (1772 feet). The fan-shaped lava flow in the lower left is about 120 meters (394 feet) thick near its edge. Lava scarps on the east side of the complex are about 90 meters (295 feet) high.

Impact Features on Venus

A perspective of impact features on Venus is obtained from the Magellan synthetic aperture radar data combined with radar altimetry. This three-dimensional perspective of the surface shows three impact craters. At the bottom is Howe crater with a diameter of 37.3 kilometers (23.1 miles). Danilova, a crater with a diameter of 47.6 kilometers (29.5 miles), appears above and to the left of Howe in the image. Aglaonice, a crater with a diameter of 62.7 kilometers (38.9 miles), is shown to the right of Danilova.

The simulated hues are based on color images recorded by the Soviet Venera 13 and 14 spacecraft. The image was produced at the JPL Multimission Image Processing Laboratory and was released on May 29, 1991.

NASA image from Magellan spacecraft

This Magellan image shows Dickinson crater, an impact crater 69 kilometers (43 miles) in diameter. The crater is complex, characterized by a partial central ring and a floor flooded by radar-dark and radar-bright materials. Hummocky, rough-textured ejecta extend all around the crater, except to the west. The lack of ejecta to the west may indicate that the impactor that produced the crater was an oblique impact from the west. Extensive radar-bright flows that emanate from the crater's eastern walls may represent large volumes of impact melt, or they may be the result of volcanic material released from the subsurface during the cratering event.