Elysium Mons is a large shield volcano on the opposite side of Mars from Olympus Mons and the other giant Tharsis volcanoes. Like its siblings in Tharsis, Elysium Mons is covered with lava flows.

The lower parts of Elysium Mons are also cut by large sinuous channels. Features like these can be found on the Moon, where they were carved by lava. On Mars, there has been some suggestion that water, rather than lava, was responsible for the erosion.

This image is covers a location where three different sinuous channels (running generally west to east) come together and are then cut by a pair of faults (running roughly north-south). The ground has pulled apart and dropped down in between these two faults, forming a depression that geologists call a "graben." In areas where there was more ground collapse, small depressions (or "pit craters") formed.

The thick coating of dust makes it hard to tell what fluid last ran through the sinuous channels in this location. However, the layers of hard rock that can be occasionally seen poking through the dust indicate that what they eroded, was a stack of lava flows.



Written by: Laszlo Kestay  (6 June 2007)


This is a stereo pair with PSP_003703_2035.