Mons Huygens Moon further north, which was visited by Apollo 15. The tallest mountain known in the Solar System is in Rheasilvia crater on the asteroid Vesta, which contains a central mound that rises high; Olympus Mons on Mars is nearly the same height, at high. In comparison, Mount Everest rises to altitude above sea level (asl), but is only (base-to-peak) (btp). Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro is about altitude above sea level to the Uhuru peak; also 4.6 km base-to-peak. America's Denali, also known as "Mount McKinley", has a base-to-peak of . The Franco-Italian "Mont Blanc/Monte Bianco" is in altitude above sea level,
Olympus Mons gradient and residual heat from the volcano's magma chamber. Potential springs or seeps around the volcano would offer exciting possibilities for detecting microbial life. Olympus Mons and a few other volcanoes in the Tharsis region stand high enough to reach above the frequent Martian dust-storms recorded by telescopic observers as early as the 19th century. The astronomer Patrick Moore pointed out that Schiaparelli (1835–1910) "had found that his "Nodus Gordis" and "Olympic Snow" [Nix Olympica] were almost the only features to be seen" during dust storms, and "guessed correctly that they must be high". The Mariner 9 spacecraft arrived in