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Venus · Planitia · 91st largest named feature

Vinmara Planitia

Swan maiden whom sea god Qat kept on Earth by hiding her wings (New Hebrides).

What Vinmara Planitia is

Vinmara Planitia is a planitia — a low plain — on Venus, 1,635 km across, centred at 53.8° N, 152.4° W in the Pandrosos Dorsa quadrangle. It is the 91st largest named feature on Venus and the 34th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Swan maiden whom sea god Qat kept on Earth by hiding her wings (New Hebrides). The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1985, 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
1,635 km
about the length of California
Coordinates
53.8° N, 152.4° W
Planetocentric, on Venus
Name approved
1985
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Pandrosos Dorsa
Map sheet on Venus
Naming category
Melanesia
Oceania

What it would take to settle Vinmara 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 53.8° N, 152.4° W.

Settlement difficulty here
42.7/ 100
Typical for this world
Venus overall
43
0.3 easier than the median site
Ranked
887th
of 1,985 named places on Venus

What this spot has going for it is ground flat ground — the easiest thing to land on and build across. What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Vinmara 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.