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Venus · Planitia · 37th largest named feature

Undine Planitia

Lithuanian water nymph, mermaid.

What Undine Planitia is

Undine Planitia is a planitia — a low plain — on Venus, 2,800 km across, centred at 13.0° N, 57.0° W in the Guinevere Planitia quadrangle. It is the 37th largest named feature on Venus and the 16th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Lithuanian water nymph, mermaid. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1997, under the theme it applies to every planitia on Venus. Of the 41 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run Greek (4), Finland (3), Slavic (2), Russia (2).

Feature class
a low plain
Diameter
2,800 km
about the width of the Mediterranean
Coordinates
13.0° N, 57.0° W
Planetocentric, on Venus
Name approved
1997
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Guinevere Planitia
Map sheet on Venus
Naming category
Lithuania
Europe

What it would take to settle Undine Planitia

Venus scores 43 as a world. That number is the same for every square metre of it — but sunlight, water, radiation and the ground under your feet are not. This is the same question asked at 13.0° N, 57.0° W.

Settlement difficulty here
39.7/ 100
Better than most of this world
Venus overall
43
3.3 easier than the median site
Ranked
3rd
of 1,985 named places on Venus

What this spot has going for it is sunlight 97% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Venus gets. What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Undine Planitia's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 74% of the model's weight had a basis here, and 2 axes were dropped as not applicable to Venus (radiation geometry, earth link). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Venus and are already counted in the world's own index, not again here.

What this cannot see: elevation. Slope, local shadowing and the polar “peaks of eternal light” — ridge tops near the poles of a barely tilted world that catch sun almost continuously while a crater floor kilometres away never does — need a terrain model this does not have. Where a real mission targets a pole, that is usually why.

What is next to it

The largest planitia features on Venus

All 41 planitiae on Venus — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.