Venus has long been known to be home to lots of volcanoes — but not that many.
A new map of the red-hot planet, which has a surface temperature of about 450 degrees Celsius (842 Fahrenheit), shows there are about 85,000 dotted over its landscape.
That’s nearly 50 times more than previous surveys have calculated.
The triangles represent volcanoes of different sizes, the black dots are deformed volcanoes, and the yellow squares are clusters of volcanoes in “volcanic fields”. Pic: Rebecca Hahn, Washington University in St. Louis
The massive map, published alongside the research in the journal Geophysical Research: Planets, was created using radar images taken by NASA’s Magellan spacecraft.
Previous studies have found evidence of volcanic activity on Venus, but the work of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis marks the first time that Magellan’s findings have been turned into such a comprehensive map.
Co-author Paul Byrne said it was “the most comprehensive map of all volcanic edifices on Venus ever produced”.
While the Washington team doesn’t know if the volcanoes are active, the map can help pinpoint potential locations for any future eruptions.
And there could be more…
Lead author Rebecca Hahn suggested that the findings may be just the tip of the magma cone.
The majority of the volcanoes mapped are less than 3.1 miles across, which is pretty small.
This is why many of them haven’t been seen yet, with Han using software that wasn’t available when the Magellan data first became available to find more elusive volcanoes.
“People at that time were hand-drawing circles around volcanoes,” she said.
“I can only do this on my computer.”
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Han believes there could be more, even smaller volcanoes scattered across the surface of Venus that might become visible with state-of-the-art imaging equipment.
Venus is already better scanned for volcanoes than Earth, as all volcanoes are on the surface.
On our planet, many are believed to be hidden under the oceans. We know with certainty only about 1,350 active volcanoes around the world.
Both NASA and the European Space Agency are preparing missions that will take pictures of Venus in greater detail than ever before – The latter aims to launch in 2031.
Mr Byrne said: “There are still a large number of questions we have on Venus that we cannot answer.
“We are just getting started.”