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Europa · Flexus · 40th largest named feature

Sidon Flexus

Another name for Tyre; where Europa was born.

What Sidon Flexus is

Sidon Flexus is a flexus — a low curved ridge with a scalloped pattern — on Europa, 1,133 km across, centred at 66.4° S, 176.6° E. It is the 40th largest named feature on Europa and the 2nd largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Another name for Tyre; where Europa was born. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1979, under the theme it applies to every flexus on Europa.

Feature class
a low curved ridge with a scalloped pattern
Diameter
1,133 km
about the length of Italy
Coordinates
66.4° S, 176.6° E
Planetocentric, on Europa
Name approved
1979
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Greek
Europe

What it would take to settle Sidon Flexus

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 66.4° S, 176.6° E.

Settlement difficulty here
63.8/ 100
Harder than most of this world
Europa overall
60.9
2.9 harder than the median site
Ranked
123rd
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 sunlight 40% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Europa gets.

Computed from Sidon Flexus'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 flexus features on Europa