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A highland region in the northern hemisphere of Venus, (the other significant 'continents' of this kind being Aphrodite Terra, south of the Venusian equator, and Lada Terra in the south polar regions). Ishtar Terra stretches for roughly 10,000km west to east, and consists of significantly different types of terrain.
The main feature of its western segment is Lakshmi Planum, a wide flat plain ringed by mountains. In fact all four of Venus' major mountain ranges are found around the edges of this plain, with the most important being the Maxwell Montes to the east. These mountains, which effectively divide Ishtar Terra into distinct halves, have the greatest elevation on the planet, rising in places to about 11,000m (some 3,000m higher than Everest on Earth). Beyond the Maxwell Montes to the east, the terrain of Ishtar Terra becomes rougher and more broken, consisting of a jumble of ridges known as Fortuna Tessera that descends down into the lowlands eastward of the main terra.
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