लाइव
Europa · Linea · 1st largest named feature

Cadmus Linea

Greek; brother of Europa.

What Cadmus Linea is

Cadmus Linea is a linea — a long, dark or bright marking — on Europa, 3,548 km across, centred at 38.7° N, 168.3° E. It is the 1st largest named feature on Europa and the 1st largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Greek; brother of Europa. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1979, 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
3,548 km
about the width of the United States
Coordinates
38.7° N, 168.3° 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 Cadmus 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 38.7° N, 168.3° E.

Settlement difficulty here
61.5/ 100
Typical for this world
Europa overall
60.9
0.6 harder than the median site
Ranked
83rd
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 -160 °C mean at this latitude.

Computed from Cadmus 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.