En vivo
Ganymede · Crater · 192nd largest named feature

Nergal

Assyro-babylonian king of the underworld.

What Nergal is

Nergal is a crater — a circular depression, almost always an impact scar — on Ganymede, 9.6 km across, centred at 38.6° N, 159.7° E. It is the 192nd largest named feature on Ganymede and the 125th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Assyro-babylonian king of the underworld. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1997, under the theme it applies to every crater on Ganymede. Of the 129 features of this class catalogued on Ganymede, the naming categories run Egypt (42), Assyro-Babylonian (30), Phoenician (18), Sumerian (16).

Feature class
a circular depression, almost always an impact scar
Diameter
9.6 km
about 1.7 times shorter than the length of Manhattan
Coordinates
38.6° N, 159.7° E
Planetocentric, on Ganymede
Name approved
1997
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Assyro-Babylonian
Asia

What it would take to settle Nergal

Ganymede scores 55 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 38.6° N, 159.7° E.

Settlement difficulty here
57.1/ 100
Harder than most of this world
Ganymede overall
55
2.1 harder than the median site
Ranked
131st
of 196 named places on Ganymede

What this spot has going for it is water same as everywhere else on this world. What works against it is temperature about -163 °C mean at this latitude.

Computed from Nergal'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 Ganymede (earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Ganymede 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 Ganymede

All 129 craters on Ganymede — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.