When we talk about amazing geological features, we often limit ourselves to those on Earth.
Venus fold mountains
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How does the planet get its heat out?
Fold mountains in Ovda Regio, Venus.
The insert is a similar view of part of the Applachians in central Pennsylvania.
NASA/JPL
I find it reassuring that at least some aspects of Venus geology look familiar.
These sprayed volcanic ash particles out over a range of tens of kilometers.
One such deposit, named Agwo Facula, surrounds the explosive vent that I have chosen as my example.
Right: most of Mercurys Caloris basin, its floor covered by dull, orange lava.
Brighter orange patches are remnants of explosive eruptions.
Lower left: close-up inside the red box of an explosive volcanic deposit.
Upper left: details of the vent interior.
Scientists suspect that there were in fact several explosive eruptions, possibly spaced over a prolonged timescale.
The tallest cliff?
In soil or vegetation-rich regions on Earth, cliffs offer the largest exposures of clean rock.
Althoughdangerous to approach, they reveal an uninterrupted cross-section of rock and can be great for fossil hunting.
Because geologists love them so much, I give you the seven-kilometers-highVerona Rupes.
NASA/JPL
This is nonsense because Verona Rupes is nowhere near vertical.
The only images we have of it are fromVoyager 2, captured during its 1986 flyby of Uranus.
If you stumbled at the top, I doubt youd even slide to the bottom.
Here, a large depression in Titans water-ice bedrock hosts a sea of liquid methane namedLigeia Mare.
Valleys carved by methane rivers draining into the sea have evidently become flooded as the sea level rose.
Has something similar happened on Titan?
Their mutual interactions are the same, and so we see geology repeating itself on different worlds.
