NASA Mars Odyssey THEMIS image: Hecate Tholus

Image Context:


Context image credit: NASA/Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) Team
[ Find on map: Javascript version ]

[ Find on map: CGI version ]

The THEMIS Image of the Day will be exploring the nomenclature of Mars for the next three weeks.

A Flash-based interactive viewer is available for this image.

Hecate Tholus

• Tholus: small dome-shaped mountain or hill
• Hecate: Goddess of the crossroads, ghosts and

  witchcraft. She has three heads (a dog, a

  snake, and a horse) that face three different

  directions. She is served by 2 ghost hounds..

Hecates Tholus is a volcano located north of Elysium Mons.

The image above is a mosaic of daytime IR images.

Nomenclature Fact of the Day: Many features on Io, a volcanically

active moon of Jupiter, are named for fire, sun, volcano,

and thunder goods and goddesses – or for people and places

from Dante’s Inferno.

[Source: ASU THEMIS Science Team]

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University