The statue
The Venus and Cupid statue subtitled: Love, the Most Beautiful of Absolute Disasters was designed in 2005 by Lancaster Artist Shane Johnstone. The statue was originally for St Georges Quay in Lancaster but was built instead at Morecambe Bay to commemorate the loss of 24 Cocklers who drowned in 2004 in Morecambe Bay.
The statue is covered in colourful mosaics that look like bathing costumes an appropriate design for a seaside resort.
"In 2011 artist Shane Johnstone threatened to destroy his sculpture on Valentines Day 2012 after spending years trying to persuade his local authority to buy it and take responsibility for it.
Shane created the sculpture on the theme of ‘Love The Most Beautiful of Absolute Disasters’.
Over a thousand people signed a petition to keep it for the people of Morecambe in 2010.
A further threat is that another local authority or individual could make Shane an offer to buy it and take it elsewhere or even abroad.
A few local residents persuaded Shane to keep the statue so that a new public trust could be set up to raise the money to save it.
The Venus and Cupid Arts Trust was formed in April 2012
Registered with the Charity Commission in January 2013, Charity Registration Number: 1150570"
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Roman Goddess Venus
Venus embodies sex, love, beauty, enticement, seduction, and persuasive female charm among the community of immortal gods; in Latin orthography, her name is indistinguishable from the Latin noun venus ("sexual love" and "sexual desire"), from which it derives. Venus has been described as perhaps "the most original creation of the Roman pantheon", and "an ill-defined and assimilative" native goddess, combined "with a strange and exotic Aphrodite".
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Roman God Cupid
In classical mythology, Cupid (Latin Cupido, meaning "desire") is the god of desire, erotic love, attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddess Venus and the war god Mars, and is known in Latin also as Amor ("Love"). His Greek counterpart is Eros.
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The Planet Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days.[14] It has the longest rotation period (243 days) of any planet in the Solar System and rotates in the opposite direction to most other planets. It has no natural satellite. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It is the second-brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon, reaching an apparent magnitude of -4.6, bright enough to cast shadows. Because Venus is an inferior planet from Earth, it never appears to venture far from the Sun; its elongation reaches a maximum of 47.8°.
Venus is a terrestrial planet and is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" because of their similar size, mass, proximity to the Sun, and bulk composition. It is radically different from Earth in other respects. It has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets, consisting of more than 96% carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 92 times that of Earth. Venus is by far the hottest planet in the Solar System, with a mean surface temperature of 735 K (462 °C; 863 °F), even though Mercury is closer to the Sun. Venus is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulphuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light. It may have had water oceans in the past, but these would have vaporized as the temperature rose due to a runaway greenhouse effect.[18] The water has probably photodissociated, and the free hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field.[19] Venus's surface is a dry desert scape interspersed with slab-like rocks and is periodically resurfaced by volcanism.
As one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus has been a major fixture in human culture for as long as records have existed. It has been made sacred to gods of many cultures, and has been a prime inspiration for writers and poets as the "morning star" and "evening star". Venus was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as early as the second millennium BC, and was a prime target for early interplanetary exploration as the closest planet to Earth. It was the first planet beyond Earth visited by a spacecraft (Mariner 2) in 1962, and the first to be successfully landed on (by Venera 7) in 1970. Venus's thick clouds render observation of its surface impossible in visible light, and the first detailed maps did not emerge until the arrival of the Magellan orbiter in 1991. Plans have been proposed for rovers or more complex missions, but they are hindered by Venus's hostile surface conditions.
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Cupid Objects.
Because tales of love are so universally popular there are numerous objects that have been named after Cupid, some using the Roman name, some the Greek version.
Asteroid 1221 Amor is named after the Roman god of love, better known as Cupid. It is the namesake of the Amor asteroids, a group of near-Earth asteroids whose orbits range between those of Earth and Mars. Amors are often Mars-crossers but they are not Earth-crossers.
Eugène Joseph Delporte, the Belgian astronomer photographed Amor in 1932 as it approached Earth to within 16 million kilometers (about 40 times the distance from Earth to the moon); this was the first time that an asteroid was seen to approach Earth so closely. A month later, 1862 Apollo was seen to cross Earth's orbit, and the scientific community suddenly realised the potential threat these flying mountains presented.
Eugène Joseph Delporte discovered a total of 66 minor planets.
763 Cupido is an asteroid belonging to the Flora family of stony type asteroids in the main belt. It was discovered by
Franz Keiser in 1913 at the Heidleberg-Konigsthul Observatory whilst working on his PHD between 1911 and 1914. He discovered a total of 21 asteroids in this period.
There is a crater called
Cupid on asteroid
433 Eros. All the craters on Eros are named after lovers.
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If you look at the website you can see pictures of the asteroid taken by The Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission. Eros, 33 x 13 x 13 kilometers, looks like a giant peanut.
After it finished orbiting Eros the craft then made a soft landing in 2001, a true Space Odyssey. This was the first time an Earth launched space craft had landed on an asteroid.
Like 1221 Amor, 433 Eros is a Mars Crossing Amor asteroid and was discovered on August 13th 1898 by the German astronomer
Carl Gustav Wilt. He discovered a total of 2 asteroids.