Olympus Mons orbit around Mars in 1971 during a global dust-storm. The first objects to become visible as the dust began to settle, the tops of the Tharsis volcanoes, demonstrated that the altitude of these features greatly exceeded that of any mountain found on Earth, as astronomers expected. Observations of the planet from Mariner 9 confirmed that Nix Olympica was a volcano. Ultimately, astronomers adopted the name "Olympus Mons" for the albedo feature known as Nix Olympica. Olympus Mons is located between the northwestern edge of the Tharsis region and the eastern edge of Amazonis Planitia. It stands about from the other
Stability of the Solar System essentially the distance from sun to earth). These are now known as the Kirkwood gaps. Some asteroids were later discovered to orbit in these gaps, but their orbits are unstable and they will eventually break out of the resonance due to close encounters with a major planet. Another common form of resonance in the Solar System is spin–orbit resonance, where the period of spin (the time it takes the planet or moon to rotate once about its axis) has a simple numerical relationship with its orbital period. An example is our own Moon, which is in a 1:1 spin–orbit resonance