Olympus Mons pokes out through the clouds

Here is another image of Mars taken on Saturday night. Mars is receeding rapidly and will soon be under 10″ (10 arc-seconds) in diameter. Consider that the moon is about 30 arc-minutes across which is 1800 arc-seconds, meaning that the current disc of Mars would fit across the Moon 180 times!

All the more amazing that we amateurs can capture things like Volcanoes on Mars. Admittedly a big one! Olympus Mons (which was known as Nix Olympica) is the tallest known volcano in the Solar System. It stands about 21km high – that’s 3 times higher than Everest! In this image it stands out dark as it juts out from the cloud (just right of centre).