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The Moon · Oceanus · 1st largest named feature

Oceanus Procellarum

"Ocean of Storms."

What Oceanus Procellarum is

Oceanus Procellarum is an oceanus — the largest of the dark lava plains — on The Moon, 2,592 km across, centred at 20.7° N, 56.7° W in the Seleucus quadrangle. It is the 1st largest named feature on The Moon and the 1st largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

"Ocean of Storms." The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1935.

Feature class
the largest of the dark lava plains
Diameter
2,592 km
about the width of the Mediterranean
Coordinates
20.7° N, 56.7° W
Planetocentric, on The Moon
Name approved
1935
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Seleucus
Map sheet on The Moon
Naming category
Latin
Europe

What it would take to settle Oceanus Procellarum

The Moon scores 29.1 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 20.7° N, 56.7° W.

Settlement difficulty here
25.9/ 100
Better than most of this world
The Moon overall
29.1
3.2 easier than the median site
Ranked
14th
of 2,023 named places on The Moon

What this spot has going for it is earth link near side — Earth stands 31° above the horizon and never moves. What works against it is water outside the ice-bearing latitudes.

Computed from Oceanus Procellarum's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 84% of the model's weight had a basis here, and one axis was dropped as not applicable to The Moon (radiation geometry). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on The Moon 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