Pavonis Mons bulge near the equator of the planet Mars. The other Tharsis volcanoes are Ascraeus Mons and Arsia Mons. The three Tharsis Montes, together with some smaller volcanoes to the north, form a fairly straight line. It has been proposed that this straight line of volcanoes is the result of the sort of plate motion which on Earth makes chains of "hot spot" volcanoes. Pavonis Mons Pavonis Mons (Latin for "peacock mountain") is a large shield volcano located in the Tharsis region of the planet Mars. It is the middle member of a chain of three volcanic mountains (collectively known as
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