Arecibo radar images showed that Lavinia Plaitia was surrounded by several corona-like features and rift-like fractures parallel to the basin margin to the east and south (Senske and others, 1991 Campbell and others, 1990). In contrast to other areas on Venus, the Lavinia Planitia area is one of several large, relatively equidimensional lowlands (basins) and as such is an important region for the analysis of processes of basin formation and volcanicflooding.īefore the Magellan mission, Lavinia Planitia was known on the basis of Pioneer-Venus altimetry to be a lowland area (Pettengill and others, 1980).

Lavinia Planitia consists of a centralized, deformed lowland flooded by volcanic deposits and surrounded by Dione Regio to the west (Keddie and Head, 1995), Alpha Regio tessera (Bindschadler and others, 1992a) and Eve Corona (Stofan and others, 1992) to the northeast, itself an extensive rift zone and coronae belt to the east and south (Baer and others, 1994 Magee and Head, 1995), Mylitta Fluctus to the south (Magee Roberts and others, 1992), and Helen Planitia to the southwest (Senske and others, 1991). It covers the central and northern part of Lavinia Planitia and parts of its margins. The Lavinia Planitia quadrangle (V-55) is in the southern hemisphere of Venus and extends from 25° to 50° south latitude and from 330° to 360° longitude.

Fluctus definition