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Venus · Terra · 2nd largest named feature

Aphrodite Terra

Greek goddess of love.

What Aphrodite Terra is

Aphrodite Terra is a terra — an extensive landmass — on Venus, 10,000 km across, centred at 5.8° S, 104.8° E in the Ovda Regio quadrangle. It is the 2nd largest named feature on Venus and the 1st largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Greek goddess of love. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1979, under the theme it applies to every terra on Venus. Of the 3 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run Greek (1), Slavic (1), Babylon (1).

Feature class
an extensive landmass
Diameter
10,000 km
about 2.0 times the width of Australia twice over
Coordinates
5.8° S, 104.8° E
Planetocentric, on Venus
Name approved
1979
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Ovda Regio
Map sheet on Venus
Naming category
Greek
Europe

What it would take to settle Aphrodite Terra

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 5.8° S, 104.8° E.

Settlement difficulty here
41/ 100
Better than most of this world
Venus overall
43
2 easier than the median site
Ranked
47th
of 1,985 named places on Venus

What this spot has going for it is sunlight 99% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Venus gets. What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Aphrodite Terra'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 terra features on Venus