Mons Argenteus

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Albedo feature on Mars
Mons Argenteus
Mons Argenteus (Mars)
Mons Argenteus
position 70 ° 0 ′  S , 30 ° 0 ′  W Coordinates: 70 ° 0 ′ 0 ″  S , 30 ° 0 ′ 0 ″  W

Mons Argenteus (literally Silver Mountain ), also Mons Argentus or Montes Argenteus , is a bright albedo structure in the southern polar region of the planet Mars . The name was introduced in 1930 by the Greek astronomer Eugène Michel Antoniadi . The name is not an official part of the nomenclature of albedo features of the planet, but it is often used in amateur astronomy and sometimes informally in specialist publications.

The region regularly forms a conspicuous albedo structure, especially in the southern spring, as an area covered by ice and frost remains over a longer period of time when the southern polar cap retreats as a result of the season . Antoniadi had therefore originally interpreted the structure as a mountain range or high plateau. However, modern recordings and measurement data from space probes do not show any surface structures in this area that rise significantly above the level of the rest of the southern highlands . With the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) from the Mars Global Surveyor , however, it was possible to determine that the area is not only strongly fissured by impact craters , but also generally slopes steeply to the south. Both properties are suitable for reducing the effects of solar radiation during the southern spring and locally preserving the remains of the southern polar cap for longer.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b E. M. Antoniadi: La Planète Mars, 1659 - 1929. Librairie Scientifique Hermann et Cie., Paris, 1930. (English translation from 1975)
  2. P. Grego: Mars and How to Observe It. 238 S., Springer Science & Business Media, 2012, ISBN 978-1-4614-2301-0 (reading sample)
  3. ^ A b J. Veverka & J. Goguen: The Nonuniform Recession of the South Polar Cap of Mars. In: The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada , Vol. 67, No. 6, pp. 273–290, 1973. (digitized version )
  4. a b Ph. B. James, BA Cantor & S. Davis: Mars Orbiter Camera observations of the Martian south polar cap in 1999-2000. In: Journal of Geophysical Research , Vol. 106, No. E10, pp. 23,635–23,652, 2001. (digitized version )

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