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Io · Mons · 26th largest named feature

Nile Montes

Where Zeus restored Io to her human form.

What Nile Montes is

Nile Montes is a mons — a mountain — on Io, 417 km across, centred at 53.6° N, 109.5° E. It is the 26th largest named feature on Io and the 7th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Where Zeus restored Io to her human form. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1997, under the theme it applies to every mons on Io. Of the 26 features of this class catalogued on Io, the naming categories run Greek (12), Italy (4), Hawaii (1), Iran (1).

Feature class
a mountain
Diameter
417 km
about the length of the Grand Canyon
Coordinates
53.6° N, 109.5° E
Planetocentric, on Io
Name approved
1997
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Greek
Europe

What it would take to settle Nile Montes

Io scores 76.7 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 53.6° N, 109.5° E.

Settlement difficulty here
79.5/ 100
Harder than most of this world
Io overall
76.7
2.8 harder than the median site
Ranked
241st
of 260 named places on Io

What this spot has going for it is sunlight 59% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Io gets. What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Nile Montes'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 Io (earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Io 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 mons features on Io

All 26 montes on Io — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.