Researchers have discovered a volcanic eruption on the planet Venus on old radar images that the “Magellan” spacecraft took more than 30 years ago and radioed to Earth. The planet closest to Earth was previously considered a dying planet – “dead”.
A team led by Robert Herrick of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who analyzed the 30-year-old images, discovered a volcanic eruption that most likely took place between 1990 and 1992. On the images, they discovered a caldera (crater, nut) on Maat Mons that has changed is.
It’s the first time astronomers have found direct evidence of recent volcanic activity on the surface of Venus, Earth’s closest neighbor, NASA reports on its website. The researchers assume that such eruptions – less explosive than those on Earth – occur at least a few times a year.
Volcanic vent got “significantly bigger”
The researchers found evidence of active volcanism by comparing two “Magellan” images taken eight months apart in 1991. In those eight months, they found that a volcanic vent that originally measured two square miles in the first radar image “greased significantly” and expanded to about four square miles.
That would put Venus next to our Earth and Jupiter’s moon Io the third celestial body in the solar system to have active magma volcanoes. The planet is dotted with volcanoes, so there are likely many more active volcanoes waiting to be discovered, NASA reports.
Third smallest planet in our solar system
Venus – with a diameter of 12,100 kilometers and almost the same size as our Earth – is the second innermost and third smallest planet in the solar system with an average distance from the sun of 108 million kilometers. Earth’s inner neighbor orbits our central star in nearly 225 days. However, because the planet rotates very slowly on its own axis, a day on Venus is 243 Earth days longer than a Venus year.
The planet is shrouded in a closed, opaque cloud cover, and its atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, with smaller amounts of nitrogen, water vapor, and sulfur dioxide, as well as trace gases. Basically, the conditions on the surface of Venus are hostile to life – the average temperature is 460 degrees Celsius, the atmospheric pressure is 90 bar.
Source: Krone
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