3D print Venus

How do you turn a region of Venus into an STL?

Open the generator, switch it to Venus, pick a landmark from the list or drag the selection box over any other region, and choose a jigsaw puzzle or a solid ornament in a circle, square or hexagon. OrbitStudio builds the model from the elevation data and shows it in 3D before you download anything, with the terrain and the frame already separated and colored. Venus models start at 4x vertical exaggeration, because at true scale the planet is nearly flat.

Generating a model and turning it around in 3D is free and needs no account. A free account adds puzzle slicing, custom frame text and a library of three models. Downloading the STL and pre-colored 3MF files takes a Plus or Merchant plan, or one credit from a pass. The frame text, the puzzle cover and the wall mount work on Venus as they do on the other worlds.

How much relief does Venus have?

About 14.6 kilometers from the lowest point to the highest: Magellan's elevation data runs from 2,951 meters below to 11,687 meters above the 6,051-kilometer sphere it is measured from. The top is in Maxwell Montes, which NASA describes as rising almost 11 kilometers above the planet's mean radius, and Maat Mons, the highest volcano, stands about 8 kilometers high. Most of the planet is far flatter than its mountains: in our measurement of Magellan's data, about four-fifths of the surface it measured lies within a kilometer of the average height.

Which regions of Venus print best?

Regions about 800 to 2,100 km across, at 3x to 6x. Magellan's altimeter measured the ground in footprints about 10 to 30 km across, so the smaller the region, the softer it looks: on a model 200 mm across that frames 450 km, one footprint spans 4 to 13 mm. Framed at about 920 km, Maxwell Montes comes out with about 2 mm of relief at 1x and 8 mm at the 4x Venus models start at. Maat Mons, framed at about 450 km, has about 13 mm of relief at 4x, but comes out soft. The great highlands are flatter for their size: Beta Regio, framed at the largest selection, about 2,100 km, has about 0.7 mm of relief at 1x and wants 6x, and the biggest of them, such as Aphrodite Terra at 10,000 km, are far larger than any selection, so their entries frame a piece of each.

Small features fare worst. Nothing much narrower than a footprint is in the data, however fine the 4.6 km grid looks, which is why a region on Venus is at least about 422 km across. Mead, the largest impact crater at 270 km, fills about two-thirds of a model that size, and in Magellan's data its floor lies only about a kilometer below its rim. Artemis, about 2,600 km across, is wider than the largest selection, which still takes in the trough that rings it.

About 3% of Venus was never measured, including everything within about four degrees of either pole. Those gaps are filled by smooth interpolation, so they print as smooth ground, and the generator says so when a tenth or more of a selection lies in one. Selections stop at 80° north and south. Unlike a model of Mercury's south pole, a Venus model carries no credit condition: the elevation data is in the public domain, as section 08 of the terms explains.

Is the map a photograph of Venus?

No. Venus is wrapped in a dense, opaque atmosphere, so cameras in orbit cannot see its surface, and nothing on the map or the globe is a photograph. NASA's Magellan, in orbit from 1990 to 1994, mapped the surface with radar instead and imaged 98% of it. The map shows those radar images, in gray or in a simulated color, or shaded maps of the heights; the globe wears the USGS's simulated-color mosaic, made to imitate the color of the surface. Brightness in a radar image is not color: rough lava returns more of the radar's energy than smooth lava, so it looks brighter, and NASA puts the bright high slopes of Maxwell Montes down to a radar-reflective mineral such as pyrite.

Are the Venera landing sites marked?

No. The best published positions of the Soviet Venera and Vega landers are the centers of landing circles about 150 kilometers in radius (Basilevsky and Weitz, 1992). A marker a few millimeters wide would claim far more precision than that, so Venus models carry none.

Which Venus landmarks are built in?

Thirty-nine, in six groups: nine in Ishtar Terra, the highland in the far north; eight volcanoes; eleven highlands; three coronae; five rifts and three craters. Each one below opens the generator on Venus, already flown to it.

Ishtar Terra

Volcanoes

Highlands

Coronae

Rifts

Craters

What is OrbitStudio?

OrbitStudio turns real elevation data into 3D-printable models. You pick a region of Venus on a globe or a flat map, choose a jigsaw puzzle or a solid ornament, and get ready-to-print files with terrain and borders already separated and colored. No CAD, no mesh repair. The heights come from NASA Magellan's radar altimetry, gridded at about 4.6 kilometers per pixel.

Trying it is free and needs no account: pick a region, generate it and turn it around in 3D. Downloading the model — STL files and pre-colored 3MF files for Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer — takes a Plus or Merchant plan, or one credit from a pass. The generator covers the Moon, Mars and Mercury too.

The night sky, too

OrbitStudio Sky, the night-sky tool, turns the sky over any place, on any date from 1900 to 2100, into a 3D-printable star map. Its STL is free.