The Snows of Olympus by MichaelEaton
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Description
In the winter of 1879, Giovanni Schiaparelli, director of the Brera Observatory in Milan, Italy, noted a tiny white spot on Mars, which he named Nix Olympica -- Snows of Olympus. Schiaparelli is primarily known today for his description of "canali" on Mars -- which he thought to be natural channels rather than the artificial creations envisioned by Percival Lowell. The canals which Schiaparelli and Lowell saw turned out to be figments of their desire to see detail where there was none. But that little white spot called Nix Olympica was very real.
Late in 1971, Mariner 9 entered orbit around Mars, just as a global dust storm was blotting out the surface. Photos from orbit showed vitually nothing. Among the few features visible was a small dark spot which scientists matched up with Nix Olympica. Three other dark spots showed up to the east. Radar data and further image processing revealed the spots to be huge volcanic mountains protruding from the global veil of dust. The Snows of Olympus became Mount Olympus -- Olympus Mons, the greatest mountain in the solar system, towering 17 miles above the Martian plain.
The reason that Nix Olympica has been seen as a white spot to Schiaparelli was that it is often surrounded by clouds and topped by frost. Clouds tend to form around Olympus Mons in the afternoon as the atmosphere is cooling.
This image is actually a careful composite of two separate renderings in Terragen. They differed primarily in the cloud/haze layer density. The limb haze was added with a plugin in Paint Shop Pro.
Comments (12)
hillrunner
Great work :)
prutzworks
looks almost an official Nasa artist's impression I once saw. Mr V. has serious concurence :-)
SabineB
Very interesting image!
Trotzgoof
Looks very cool and it really looks like Olympus Mons. The planet is abit to small I guess (am I right?). Great work
Kate
Awesome work Michael....the composing of the multiple renders must have taken some time since they are so good!!!!
karbuk
The curvature of the planet is about right. It just looks weird because we are used to seeing things on Terran scales. The Apollo astronauts commented that the edge of the moon seemed so close that they felt like they could walk off it. Olympus Mons is 17 miles tall and has a base the size of the state of nevada, on a planet almost half the size of ours!
Topsider
Impressive!
sven1974
please go on rendering and we don't need any spacetrips in further time ;-) really awesome work.
duesentrieb
Very impressive scientific image! I'll have to run my mars map again when I get home today...
Bleze
very nice...
MichaelEaton
Thanks for all the very ego-enhancing comments. A personal note: To think that this pix was the result of boredom. I had resolved not to do any more renderings until a new & far-faster system arrived in another week. Finally, out of a desperate need to feed my rendering hunger, I succumbed to the temptation. "Snows" was the result. Maybe I shouldn't get the new system...
kestrello
Breath-taking!