The discovery of volcanic lava flow in two different regions of Venus is published in Nature Astronomy. It supports previous evidence that Venus is still geologically active, and also suggests that volcanic activity may be greater and more widespread than previously thought.

The difficulty in confirming volcanism on Venus is the planet’s dense atmosphere which obscures much of what is happening on the surface.

But scientists were able to get a picture of activity by comparing images from when the Magellan spacecraft conducted global radar mapping in 1990 and 1992, with new images from 2023.