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Europa · Linea · 19th largest named feature

Rhadamanthys Linea

Son of Europa and Zeus.

What Rhadamanthys Linea is

Rhadamanthys Linea is a linea — a long, dark or bright marking — on Europa, 1,747 km across, centred at 19.3° N, 159.5° E. It is the 19th largest named feature on Europa and the 12th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Son of Europa and Zeus. 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
1,747 km
about the length of California
Coordinates
19.3° N, 159.5° E
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 Rhadamanthys 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 19.3° N, 159.5° E.

Settlement difficulty here
60.7/ 100
Typical for this world
Europa overall
60.9
0.2 easier than the median site
Ranked
54th
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 -155 °C mean at this latitude.

Computed from Rhadamanthys 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.