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Callisto · Crater · 10th largest named feature

Heimdall

Teutonic god of light, guardian of the great bridge Bifröst.

What Heimdall is

Heimdall is a crater — a circular depression, almost always an impact scar — on Callisto, 210 km across, centred at 63.5° S, 3.0° E. It is the 10th largest named feature on Callisto and the 1st largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Teutonic god of light, guardian of the great bridge Bifröst. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2000, under the theme it applies to every crater on Callisto. Of the 141 features of this class catalogued on Callisto, the naming categories run Norse (70), Finland (12), Norway (10), Eskimo (9).

Feature class
a circular depression, almost always an impact scar
Diameter
210 km
about the length of the Grand Canyon
Coordinates
63.5° S, 3.0° E
Planetocentric, on Callisto
Name approved
2000
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Teutonic
Europe

What it would take to settle Heimdall

Callisto scores 44.6 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 63.5° S, 3.0° E.

Settlement difficulty here
46.3/ 100
Typical for this world
Callisto overall
44.6
1.7 harder than the median site
Ranked
127th
of 154 named places on Callisto

What this spot has going for it is water same as everywhere else on this world. What works against it is sunlight 45% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Callisto gets.

Computed from Heimdall's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 84% of the model's weight had a basis here, and 2 axes were dropped as not applicable to Callisto (earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Callisto 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 crater features on Callisto

All 141 craters on Callisto — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.