Olympus Mons

Today's VIS image shows part of the lower flank of Olympus Mons. The bright band in the image is an escarpment, where there is a large elevation change over a very short linear range - a cliff. This escarpment is called Olympus Rupes. In 2-D images it is very difficult to interpret the height component. In this case, the elevation change from the highest point (bottom of image) to the lowest point (top of image) is 7757m (25,449 feet). Olympus Mons is 21.9km (13.6 miles, 72,000 feet) tall. For comparison, Mt Everest is only 29,032 feet tall.