En vivo
Io · Tholus · 204th largest named feature

Tsui Goab Tholus

Hottentot (southern Africa) supreme being, associated with thunder.

What Tsui Goab Tholus is

Tsui Goab Tholus is a tholus — a small domical mountain or hill — on Io, 48.5 km across, centred at 0.2° S, 163.0° W. It is the 204th largest named feature on Io and the 3rd largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Hottentot (southern Africa) supreme being, associated with thunder. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2003, under the theme it applies to every tholus on Io. Of the 3 features of this class catalogued on Io, the naming categories run Greek (2), Hottentot (1).

Feature class
a small domical mountain or hill
Diameter
48.5 km
about a marathon
Coordinates
0.2° S, 163.0° W
Planetocentric, on Io
Name approved
2003
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Hottentot
Africa

What it would take to settle Tsui Goab Tholus

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 0.2° S, 163.0° W.

Settlement difficulty here
76.1/ 100
Typical for this world
Io overall
76.7
0.6 easier than the median site
Ranked
83rd
of 260 named places on Io

What this spot has going for it is sunlight 100% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Io gets. What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Tsui Goab Tholus'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 tholus features on Io