Measuring 200 km in diameter and 2,500 meters high, the Idunn Mons volcano dominates the plains that cover much of Imdr Regio, in the southern hemisphere of Venus. Planetary science experts have suspected for years that our neighboring world experienced intense volcanic activity in the recent past, at least from a geological point of view.
Thus, the data provided by the Venus Express probe of the European Space Agency, which was studying the planet between 2006 and 2014, made it possible to determine in 2010 that in Idunn Mons the levels of infrared radiation were significantly higher than in the surrounding area. The finding suggested that lava had flowed down its slopes less than 2.5 million years ago and that the area was still very hot , but the dense layer of clouds that covers Venus greatly complicates observations and at that time it could not be established. if the volcano was still active.
In 2015, those responsible for the Venus Express mission announced that they had found areas near some volcanoes in which the temperature was around 830 ° C, while the average on the planet’s surface is about 480 ° C.
Now, a new study coordinated by Piero D’Incecco of the Department of Planetary Physics at the German Aerospace Center seems to confirm that volcanic activity still exists on Venus. As announced at the last meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, in Pasadena (California), D’Incecco and his collaborators built a model based on the information provided by the ESA spacecraft and the measurements of radar collected by NASA’s Magellan between 1990 and 1994 that confirms the existence of “fresh” lava flows and allows observing the evolution of five of them, one that covers the top of Idunn Mons, and another four on its slope Oriental. This is the first time that this phenomenon has been graphically represented in such detail on an object other than Earth .
Image: NASA
