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Alpha Regio is a roughly square region of tessera about 1500 kilometers across and centered at 22°S, 5°E. Tessera is terrain that has been highly deformed where the deformation strikes in multiple directions and is closely spaced. The term comes from the Greek word for “tiled” (Russian investigators analyzing Venera 15 and 16 imagery thought this terrain looked like a parquet floor). Like all tessera regions, it sits above the surrounding terrain (1–2 kilometers elevation) and is heavily deformed by what appears to be contractional folding. Like most tessera units, the surrounding volcanic plains appear to have flowed around Alpha's margins and thus are younger than Alpha. Other features to note are the Eve Corona in the lower left corner and the cluster of pancake domes (see slide #23) in the lower right portion of the image. Click here to view a high-resolution version of the image (727 KB)
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