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Europa · Crater · 119th largest named feature

Balor

Celtic god of the night whose evil eye caused the death of those on whom it glanced.

What Balor is

Balor is a crater — a circular depression, almost always an impact scar — on Europa, 4.8 km across, centred at 52.8° S, 97.8° W. It is the 119th largest named feature on Europa and the 31st largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Celtic god of the night whose evil eye caused the death of those on whom it glanced. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2000, under the theme it applies to every crater on Europa. Of the 41 features of this class catalogued on Europa, the naming categories run Celtic (30), Ireland (10), Greek (1).

Feature class
a circular depression, almost always an impact scar
Diameter
4.8 km
about a 5 km run
Coordinates
52.8° S, 97.8° W
Planetocentric, on Europa
Name approved
2000
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Celtic
Europe

What it would take to settle Balor

Europa scores 60.9 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 52.8° S, 97.8° W.

Settlement difficulty here
60.6/ 100
Typical for this world
Europa overall
60.9
0.3 easier than the median site
Ranked
53rd
of 129 named places on Europa

What this spot has going for it is water same as everywhere else on this world. What works against it is temperature about -167 °C mean at this latitude.

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

All 41 craters on Europa — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.