Where is Olympus Mons on Mars?
Olympus Mons is centred at 18.65° north, 133.80° west, north of the Martian equator. It stands on the north-western edge of the Tharsis rise, the volcanic upland that also carries three other giant volcanoes: Arsia, Pavonis and Ascraeus Mons. To the north and west, a belt of huge ridges and blocks called the aureole reaches some 1,000 kilometres from the summit, far beyond the cliff at the volcano's foot.
How tall is Olympus Mons?
Published heights run from about 22 to 27 kilometres, because they start from different levels. The firm figure is the summit, which NASA's laser altimeter data put 21,290 metres above the Mars datum, the reference surface Martian heights are measured from. Above the plains at its base, the USGS and ESA both give about 22 kilometres. The volcano is about 600 kilometres across, its flanks slope 2 to 5 degrees, and a cliff that reaches 6 to 9 kilometres high in places runs right round its foot.
Why is Olympus Mons so big?
Mars has no tectonic plates drifting over its hot spots. On Earth that drift is why Hawaii is a chain of volcanoes; on Mars, as NASA puts it, one source could keep building a single huge one instead. Lower gravity also allowed magma to be pushed to great heights. Parts of it are young, too: ESA's Mars Express found evidence that its summit caldera was resurfaced within the last 20 million years, with lava possibly erupting from small vents as recently as two million years ago.
What does Olympus Mons look like as a 3D print?
It reads at true scale, as a broad dome rather than a peak. Frame the volcano's 600 kilometres to fill a model 200 millimetres across and its 22 kilometres or so of relief come out at about 7 millimetres, on flanks as gentle as the real ones. The cliff at its foot is a step of 2 to 3 millimetres, the caldera a shallow pit about 27 by 22. At 2x to 3x it stands 15 to 22 millimetres tall and reads as a mountain; take in more of the plains around it and every figure shrinks in proportion.
The elevation data suits a feature this size: the cliff, the caldera and the collapse pits nested inside it, 12 to 65 kilometres across, all come through. Anything a few hundred metres across is not. The graben on the caldera floor, about 500 metres wide and under 200 metres deep, fall below it, and so do the individual lava flows around the summit, which earlier maps made from images coarser than 150 metres per pixel could not pick out either.
What is OrbitStudio?
OrbitStudio turns real NASA elevation data into 3D-printable models. You pick a region of Mars on a globe or a flat map, choose a jigsaw puzzle or a solid ornament, and get ready-to-print files with terrain and borders already separated and coloured. No CAD, no mesh repair. The heights come from the laser altimeter on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, MOLA, at up to 463 metres per pixel.
Trying it is free and needs no account: pick a region, generate it and turn it around in 3D. Downloading the model — STL files and pre-coloured 3MF files for Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer — uses one credit from a pass. The generator covers the Moon too.
Other landmarks
The night sky, too
StellarMesh, from the same maker, turns the sky over any place, on any date from 1900 to 2100, into a 3D-printable star map. Its STL is free.