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Io · Mons · 56th largest named feature

Pillan Mons

Araucanian thunder, fire, and volcano god.

What Pillan Mons is

Pillan Mons is a mons — a mountain — on Io, 201 km across, centred at 8.0° S, 114.6° E. It is the 56th largest named feature on Io and the 17th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Araucanian thunder, fire, and volcano god. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2006, 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
201 km
about 1.7 times shorter than the length of the Grand Canyon
Coordinates
8.0° S, 114.6° E
Planetocentric, on Io
Name approved
2006
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Araucanian
South and Central America

What it would take to settle Pillan Mons

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 8.0° S, 114.6° E.

Settlement difficulty here
77/ 100
Typical for this world
Io overall
76.7
0.3 harder than the median site
Ranked
144th
of 260 named places on Io

What this spot has going for it is sunlight 99% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Io gets. What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Pillan Mons'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.