Dave's ASH Archive - Venus

Last Updated: 6/3/08

Venus Planetary Map

    This map is based on radar altitude maps of Venus, such as the one found here. I painted it as a Winkel Tripel Projection, rather than the Mercator style in the radar map. I didn't try to get it exactly right, as I figure that the arrival of the Leviathan rearranged some of the planetary features.

    And now for a grayscaled smaller version of the map with a key. The names of places will start as the real world ones, or close analogues. But as the various Terran factions start staking claims, names may change. Note: Montreal is that little green dot in the small lake near the North Pole. Probably not to scale, but I wanted it to be big enough to see.


1. Lakshmi Planum
2. Maxwell Montes
3. Fortuna Tessera
4. Tethus Regio
5. Guinevere Sea
6. Sedna Sea
7. Bell Regio
8. (no name)
9. Tellus Regio		 10. Niobe Sea
11. (no name)
12. Vifrun Regio
13. New Menuush (formerly Vifrun Regio)
14. Asteria Ocean
15. Beta Regio
16. Navka Ocean
17. Eistla Regio
18. Eistla Regio
19. (no name)		 20. (no name)
21. (no name)
22. Atla Regio
23. Asteria Ocean
24. Phoebe Regio
25. Alpha Regio
26. Tritonis (formerly Ouda Regio)
27. Thetis Regio
28. Dali Archipelago
29. (no name) 		30. Aino Sea
31. Artemis Archipelago
32. (no name)
33. Themis Regio
34. Helen Sea
35. Pele Regio
36. (no name)
37. (no name)
38. Imdr Regio
    Entries 1-3 are collectively the Ishtar Terra. 26, 27, 28 and 31 are part of Aphrodite Terra. 35-37 are the mostly sunken Lada Terra. And I've replaced "Planitia" with "Sea" or "Ocean" for underwater stuff. If the map I was using for reference has no name for a feature, I listed it as (no name), but I expect the area has been named. You'll also notice some names twice, that's because it's a single region officially, but due to submersion effects I figure will eventually get split, name-wise.

Closeup of North polar region.

Environment

    Venus is a hot, jungle planet for the most part. However, with days that last a few hundred Terran days, there's a much more homogenous climate, since there's little rotation to power the sorts of weather systems seen on Earth. Instead, hot air on dayside rises and flows fairly uniformly back to nightside, where it sinks again. The strongest winds are at the day/night terminator, especially at the equator. The poles tend to have the most chaotic weather patterns in general, similar to temperate zones on Earth. Typical dayside temperatures reach 50C, while high humidity means even nightside tends to be around 30C. The arctic zones tend to be about 30C on dayside and 15C on nightside. Storms can temporarily drop temperatures by as much as 10C, but it never gets below freezing on Venus, even in the high mountains of Maxwell Montes.

    The ecosystem is far more vibrant than it has any right to be. This is due to the spirits of the Leviathan and Photosynth that infuse the planet. These energies make nightside livable and may also blunt the heat of dayside. All living things have some potential for self-awareness as well, although they rarely exhibit it.

    As mentioned above, the day is very long on Venus, longer than the year, in fact. The Sun rises in the west due to its retrograde rotation, and as of late December 2025 the day/night terminator crosses through Ouda Regio for dawn and in the Asteria Sea for dusk. (This may not match up with reality, but for dramatic purposes it's where I want dayside to be, so that's where it's gonna be. The planet shuddered arbitrarily in its rotation when the Leviathan hit. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)

Approximate location of dawn and sunset lines for 2026 (middle of each month).
Daylight is left of the dawn line and right of the sunset line.

    Venus is about the size of Earth, with a surface gravity that is close enough that it'll only matter to sensitive instrumentation. Before the arrival of the Leviathan, there was no magnetic field, but its arrival triggered the restarting of the planet's dormant magnetodynamo. The magnetic north pole is precisely at the rotational north pole. The magnitude of the planetary magnetic field is approximately 0.8 Gauss at the surface, although at the location of Montreal the component parallel to the surface (and therefore usable for navigation) is only about 0.3 Gauss. For reference, Earth's magnetic field at midlatitudes is about 0.5 Gauss. The stronger planetary magnetic field blocks the solar wind almost exactly as well as Earth's does (closer planet, stronger field), but the Auroras are much more vibrant.

    The atmosphere is rather dense, so at sea level the pressure is a somewhat uncomfortable 1200 millibars. On the other hand, this leaves higher altitudes like Maxwell Montes or the mountains of Atla Regio at a more livable 900 millibars (1000 millibars is standard Earth atmospheric pressure at sea level). The air is 25% oxygen, 74% nitrogen and 1% other elements, a somewhat richer blend than humans are used to. There is no noticeable ozone layer, but the sheer thickness of the atmosphere blunts most of the UV, rendering UV hazards only slightly higher than on Earth. Some suspect a slight magical shielding as well.

    The Adler Planetarium has a good general information page on Venus, where you can find information about things that haven't changed, like the length of the day and distance from the Sun.

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