Merisa Fluctus
What Merisa Fluctus is
Merisa Fluctus is a fluctus — a flow of erupted material — on Venus, 630 km across, centred at 20.5° N, 9.0° E in the Sappho Patera quadrangle. It is the 308th largest named feature on Venus and the 25th largest of its class there.
Where the name comes from
Adygan (N. Caucasus) beekeeping goddess. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2000, under the theme it applies to every fluctus on Venus. Of the 53 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run Egypt (6), Siberia (4), Japan (3), Roman (3).
What it would take to settle Merisa Fluctus
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 20.5° N, 9.0° E.
What this spot has going for it is sunlight — 94% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Venus gets. What works against it is water — same as everywhere else on this world.
Computed from Merisa Fluctus'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 fluctus features on Venus
All 53 fluctus on Venus — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.