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Mars · Mons · 806th largest named feature

Gorgonum Mons

Classical albedo feature name of Greek origin, Gorgonum Sinus.

What Gorgonum Mons is

Gorgonum Mons is a mons — a mountain — on Mars, 70 km across, centred at 35.3° S, 169.7° W in the Phaethontis quadrangle. It is the 806th largest named feature on Mars and the 45th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Classical albedo feature name of Greek origin, Gorgonum Sinus. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2020, under the theme it applies to every mons on Mars. Of the 62 features of this class catalogued on Mars, the naming categories run Greek (39), Latin (20), Turkey (1), Tanzania (1).

Feature class
a mountain
Diameter
70 km
about the width of Yellowstone
Coordinates
35.3° S, 169.7° W
Planetocentric, on Mars
Name approved
2020
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Phaethontis
Map sheet on Mars
Naming category
Greek
Europe

What it would take to settle Gorgonum Mons

Mars scores 26.6 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 35.3° S, 169.7° W.

Settlement difficulty here
28.7/ 100
Harder than most of this world
Mars overall
26.6
2.1 harder than the median site
Ranked
2011th
of 2,049 named places on Mars

What this spot has going for it is sunlight 84% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Mars gets. What works against it is water outside the ice-bearing latitudes.

Computed from Gorgonum Mons's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 74% of the model's weight had a basis here, and 2 axes were dropped as not applicable to Mars (radiation geometry, earth link). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Mars 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 Mars

All 62 montes on Mars — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.