This cache is part of a 1:133,700,000 scale model of the solar system. The dome on the Monroe County Courthouse in downtown Bloomington serves as a model of the sun.
The original original version of this cache was hidden in a different location in the same parking lot, but a landscaping forced it to be relocated elsewhere. The cache was archived and a replacement was created near campus, but that one lasted for only a week before it disappeared. I deemed that location to be too risky, so I found a new spot near the original original and moved it there. So if you found the old one that was near here, note that this is in a different location. (Note the easier terrain rating!)
Venus is about 12,100 kilometers in diameter which, at this scale, corresponds to roughly 3.57 inches. This model is slightly larger than that, but it's pretty close to the right size. Venus has the most circular orbit of all the planets, orbiting at 107 to 109 million kilometers from the sun, so this model would have to have been placed half a mile form the Courthouse, give or take only 25 feet. That's not a very big margin, so I fudged things a bit and put it a few dozen feet further away. I may be a pedant, but I have limits.
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, named after the roman goddess of love and beauty. Because it is closer to the Sun than the Earth, it is only ever visible in the hours just after sunset or before sunrise. For a while, Venus was thought of as two different stars: the Morning Star and the Evening Star.
Other than the Moon and the Sun, Venus is the brightest object in our sky. This is partly because it is often close to us, but also because it is very white, due to the thick clouds of sulfuric acid that completely cover the surface. In the visible spectrum, there are very few distinguishing features to be seen, even in the clouds, which is why this model has such a boring paint job.
Despite being so similar to Earth in size, the extremely dense atmosphere makes exploring the planet very difficult. The air pressure on the surface of Venus is comparable to the pressure at a depth of 1 km in Earth’s oceans.