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Lo Shen Valles

Chinese river goddess.

What Lo Shen Valles is

Lo Shen Valles is a vallis — a valley — on Venus, 225 km across, centred at 12.8° S, 89.6° E in the Ix Chel Chasma quadrangle. It is the 709th largest named feature on Venus and the 57th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Chinese river goddess. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1994, under the theme it applies to every vallis on Venus. Of the 72 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run Egypt (3), China (3), India (3), Mayan (2).

Feature class
a valley
Diameter
225 km
about the length of the Grand Canyon
Coordinates
12.8° S, 89.6° E
Planetocentric, on Venus
Name approved
1994
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Ix Chel Chasma
Map sheet on Venus
Naming category
China
Asia

What it would take to settle Lo Shen Valles

Venus scores 43 as a world. That number is the same for every square metre of it — but sunlight, water, radiation and the ground under your feet are not. This is the same question asked at 12.8° S, 89.6° E.

Settlement difficulty here
43/ 100
Typical for this world
Venus overall
43
Exactly typical
Ranked
993rd
of 1,985 named places on Venus

What this spot has going for it is sunlight 98% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Venus gets. What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Lo Shen Valles's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 74% of the model's weight had a basis here, and 2 axes were dropped as not applicable to Venus (radiation geometry, earth link). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Venus and are already counted in the world's own index, not again here.

What this cannot see: elevation. Slope, local shadowing and the polar “peaks of eternal light” — ridge tops near the poles of a barely tilted world that catch sun almost continuously while a crater floor kilometres away never does — need a terrain model this does not have. Where a real mission targets a pole, that is usually why.

What is next to it

The largest vallis features on Venus

All 72 valles on Venus — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.