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Europa · Linea · 52nd largest named feature

Telephassa Linea

Europa's mother.

What Telephassa Linea is

Telephassa Linea is a linea — a long, dark or bright marking — on Europa, 777 km across, centred at 0.8° S, 177.2° W. It is the 52nd largest named feature on Europa and the 39th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Europa's mother. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1985, under the theme it applies to every linea on Europa. Of the 49 features of this class catalogued on Europa, the naming categories run Greek (38), Celtic (6), England (3), France (1).

Feature class
a long, dark or bright marking
Diameter
777 km
about the length of Italy
Coordinates
0.8° S, 177.2° W
Planetocentric, on Europa
Name approved
1985
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Greek
Europe

What it would take to settle Telephassa Linea

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 0.8° S, 177.2° W.

Settlement difficulty here
59.9/ 100
Typical for this world
Europa overall
60.9
1 easier than the median site
Ranked
24th
of 129 named places on Europa

What this spot has going for it is sunlight 100% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Europa gets. What works against it is temperature about -153 °C mean at this latitude.

Computed from Telephassa Linea'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 linea features on Europa

All 49 lineae on Europa — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.