Volcanoes on Venus — How Many, How Big, and Are Any Active?

There are more volcanoes on Venus than on any other planet we know about. Some are bigger than entire countries. Some are shaped like enormous pancakes. And here's the bit that's only really become clear in the last couple of years: a few of them are still erupting today.

Let's go through them properly.

How Many Volcanoes Are on Venus?

For decades, the answer to this question was about 1,600. That's how many large volcanoes scientists could spot in radar maps of Venus's surface.

Then, in 2020, a team of researchers had another go. They counted volcanoes of every size, not just the big ones. The new total came in at over 85,000.

Most of those are smaller cone-shaped volcanoes, less than 5 km across. The really enormous ones, the kind you could see from space without trying, are still in the original list of around 1,600. Either way you count, Venus easily wins the volcano contest. Earth, by comparison, has about 1,500 known volcanoes, and most of them are underwater.

The Biggest Volcanoes on Venus

Some Venusian volcanoes are absolutely massive. Here are the ones whose names you should know.

Maxwell Montes is the tallest mountain on the entire planet. It rises 11 km (almost 7 miles) above the surrounding plains, which makes it taller than Mount Everest. Maxwell Montes sits in a continent-sized highland region called Ishtar Terra, up in Venus's northern hemisphere. Ishtar Terra is roughly the size of Australia.

Aphrodite Terra is even bigger. It runs along Venus's equator and is about the size of South America. It contains huge volcanoes, deep valleys, and stretches of weird ridged ground called tesserae.

Maat Mons is one of the most famous volcanoes on Venus. It's about 8 km tall and is now also famous for one more reason: in 2023, scientists confirmed it's actually erupting. (More on that in a minute.)

Pancake Domes — Venus's Weirdest Volcanoes

This bit is properly cool. Venus has a kind of volcano that doesn't exist anywhere else in the solar system. Scientists call them pancake domes, and the name is genuinely accurate.

A pancake dome is a flat, perfectly round splat of lava sitting on the ground. They can be up to 15 km wide but less than 1 km tall. Imagine a giant disc of cooled lava roughly the size of a small city, sitting on otherwise flat plains.

Why don't we get pancake domes on Earth? Two reasons. First, Venus's lava is a particular gloopy type that flows differently to most Earth lava. Second, Venus's incredibly thick atmosphere squashes the lava down as it erupts, spreading it out instead of letting it pile up. So instead of getting tall, cone-shaped volcanoes, you get giant pancakes.

There's another type of weird Venusian volcano nicknamed the tick because it looks a bit like the bug. (Officially they're called "scalloped margin domes," but tick is a much better name.)

Are Venus's Volcanoes Still Active?

For a long time, scientists weren't sure. There were hints. Venus's surface looked young, suggesting it had been recently resurfaced by lava. Some volcano vents glowed warmer in infrared images. But nobody had caught Venus volcano red-handed.

Then in 2023, things changed.

A research team went back through old Magellan radar images from the early 1990s and compared photos of the same volcano taken months apart. On Maat Mons, one volcanic vent was clearly bigger and a different shape in the second image than in the first. Lava had erupted out of it during the eight months between the two photos.

That was the first direct proof that Venus has active, presently-erupting volcanoes.

In 2024, a second team did the same trick and found two more active volcanoes: Sif Mons and a region called Niobe Planitia. Both had erupted while Magellan was watching. Together, the eruptions had produced enough fresh lava to fill about 90,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

So yes, Venus has active volcanoes. Quite a lot of them, probably. Scientists now think the level of volcanic activity on Venus might be comparable to Earth's.

How Do We Map Venus's Volcanoes?

You can't just take a normal photograph of Venus's surface, because the planet is wrapped in clouds so thick you can't see through them. Visible light can't get through.

So scientists use radar instead.

NASA's Magellan spacecraft orbited Venus from 1990 to 1994 and used radar to "see" through the clouds. Radio waves it sent down bounced off the surface and came back up, and the timing of those bounces told the spacecraft what shapes were down there. Magellan ended up mapping 98% of Venus's surface, and that map is still the best one we have today, more than thirty years later.

That's about to change. NASA's upcoming VERITAS mission and the European Space Agency's EnVision mission will both map Venus in much higher detail using next-generation radar. They'll launch in the early 2030s.

Frequently Asked Questions

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• Venus Facts for Kids — The Complete Guide
• Venus's Atmosphere — Acid Clouds and Crushing Pressure
• Missions to Venus
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