Shows the elevation of the martian landscape.

red = hill, blue = valley

the big blue crater at 60°E, 45°S is probably an old impact crater from an asteroid and is 4 km deep!

The highest mountain on Mars is olympus mons at 20°N, 130°W with an altitude of 21 km above planet-wide average.

Source: NASA, Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter

Also we have a whole Mars community here: [email protected]
In case you want to know more about the planet, please feel free to ask :)

  • EpeeGnome@feddit.onlineEnglish
    13·
    7 days ago

    Whenever I see an elevation map of Mars I can’t help but see that one entire hemisphere is lower and the other higher, and I wonder if maybe we just misjudged the correct location of the middle. Maybe something to do with the gravitational center vs the volumetric center. I’m sure there’s more to it, but I always find it striking, and never have seen an explanation of what feels like a discrepancy to my intuition.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deOPEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      sorry for the late reply. yes it is indeed a difference between volumetric and gravitational center. there’s speculation that such a shift could have been caused by a big-enough asteroid impact, for example the one which left a big crater at 60°E, 45°S. It could have shifted the somewhat heavier core of the planet sideways, thus shifting the gravitational center away from the volumetric center.