Hello! I'm Tytus Mak and I am the author of this page. I am creating this for my science project, in which we all have to create web pages on topics that we choose. This is my web page on volcanoes of other planets, and I hope that you enjoy it!
on other planets are very unique. They are not at all like the ones on earth, and work under different conditions than the ones we know. There are many types of volcanoes throughout the solar system. The most known are the ones on Mars, the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter's moon, Io.
Mars, despite its first impression as being a dead planet, is on the contrary, quite impressive with its many landforms. Mars is known to have the largest shield volcanoes in the solar system. As you can see on this map of Mars, there are many shield volcanos that are quite huge.
There are also a number of other different landforms that greatly exceed our planets landforms. These landforms are canyons, mountains, and other common landfroms that are on our planet. Some are formed by volcanos such as the ones seen on the map.
Mars' volcanos are very old. Because of Mars' lack of plate tectonics, the volcanos are not renewed as often as the ones on earth. These volcanoes are roughly 3 to 3.5 billion years old. They are about as old as the ones on the moon. Some volcanos, however, are not as old as others. the latest activity on Mars was only 20 to 200 million years old. The volcanoes on mars have no specific pattern at all. They are very random, and unlike the moon, the volcanoes don't seem to be centered around andy large craters.
Venus has been contemplated by many for ages. Many have hypothesized that the planet Venus had many advanced civilizations inhabiting it. The truth was that its atmosphere that gave this planet the name of the Greek Godess of love was acidic, and not even remotely fit for life. It, however is known to have the most volcanoes in the entire solar system.
This "sister" of earth has so many volcanoes that it cannot even be counted (an estimation of 1600 major volcanoes, and thousands upon thousands more minor ones). Because of the fact that it is impossible to actually see through Venus' thick atmosphere, and because no spacecraft can survive long enough to gather enough data on its surface, we do not know if the volcanoes on venus are still active or not. We do know, however, what kinds of volcanoes there are.
As you can plainly see on the map above, there are a variety of volcanoes on Venus' surface. Such types are shield volcanoes, and large flows. Volcanoes on Venus look fresh because the surface pressure on Venus is so great that the wind is weak and has no effect on volcanoes as they do on Earth. It is also noted that eruptions on Venus are not as violent and destructive as earth's because the main force behind Earth's eruptions are water, and Venus is obviously short on water. Volcano locations are, like on Mars, disorganized and has no particular area of formation. Overall, we can say that Volcanoes on Venus are, although plentiful, not very active.
Io is one of Jupiter's numerous moons. It is about the same size as Earth's moon, and it is Jupiter's innermost moon. This moon is known to have the most volcanic activity in the entire Solar System.
This planet is so volcanically active that its surface is completely buried in under 100 meters of voolcanic material every million years. This is a very fast rate, compared to the earth, which gets buried in volcanic material on two-thirds of its surface only every 80 million years. Io shows little signs of craters. This is because the constant eruptions from Io's numerous volcanoes cover the craters. The picture above is falsly colored. The large red spots are the most recent eruptions. Some eruptions are so huge and violent that the plumes can be easily be seen from space. As the picture on the right shows, this eruption of Pillan Patera has an eruption plume height of about 86 miles. Some eruptions have rather dark jets and has a thick look with a velocity of 500 meters a second. Other types of eruptions can be quite transparent with velocities of 100 meters a second or more. Io holds much information about volcanoes and may even help us further understand out planet.
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