Tharsis Volcanoes, Mars, current time

Well, that session started out reasonably well and by the last page progressed into a highly unlikely direction.

The target is from Daz’s target monkey pool, the tasking was to “Move to the optimum position/location and describe one or more of the Tharsis volcanoes on Mars.“

Tharsis is a vast volcanic plateau centered near the equator in the western hemisphere of Mars. The region is home to the largest volcanoes in the Solar System, including the three enormous shield volcanoes Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Ascraeus Mons, which are collectively known as the Tharsis Montes. [Source: Wikipedia]

So let’s see my data. My first impressions were of a sandy, rocky beige and terracotta land.

Next I saw a mound-like land formation with what looked like terraces. I do believe natural erosion might be able to create terraced mounds and cliffs that resemble manmade forms, so I am ready to call this a natural mound form.

I checked the few images available from this region, and Arsia Mons has braided fluvial channels, practically several paralelly running lines on the slopes of the Volcano, currently theorized to have been created by glacial erosion.

When I moved above target, I saw what looked like a meandering ridge with three round formations.

This sketch is somewhat off in accuracy, because although there is a ridged, large meandery natural structure near the Tharsis Volcanos (it is called the Nootis Labyrintus near the Valles Marineris) it is not at the exact location where the three main volcanos are, but slightly to the South-East of them.

When I moved directly in front of the target I did not see a whole lot going on, a mountain like elevation, a vast moisty flat plain and a rounded glowy, firey, lightsource. None of the volcanos are believed to be active current time, so the perception of a firey, sizzly glowy area at the foot of the mountain-like formation might have been a non-voluntary temporal move (because I usually move on the timeline, but this time I did not use a timeline) or could be indicating volcanic activity of which we don’t know yet.

One interesting feeling was the very moistyness of the flat, planar region. Interestingly, there were scientific observations of atmospheric water vapor above the Tharsis volcanoes, and a new study links water oceans on ancient Mars to the rise of the planet’s Tharsis volcano system. How cool.

When moving to the most important aspect of the tasking (note to self- remember to do that in every session), I got a deep rounded hollow rocky downward pit-like formation. I guess that would be one of the craters.

Out of the craters, Pavonis Mons is the most pronounced pit-like crater, so let us go with that. One weird thing that struck me when I was sketching this “pit” is how I perceived what looked like pillary protrusions on the sidewalls of the pit, but if you look at this large picture below, on the lower side the light conditions highlight some of the vertical protrusions of the crater that are thought to be lava tubes.