लाइव
Europa · Regio · 17th largest named feature

Tara Regio

In Celtic mythology, the main royal residence of the High Kings.

What Tara Regio is

Tara Regio is a regio — a large area distinguished by its brightness or colour — on Europa, 1,780 km across, centred at 10.0° S, 75.0° W. It is the 17th largest named feature on Europa and the 6th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

In Celtic mythology, the main royal residence of the High Kings. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2007, under the theme it applies to every regio on Europa. Of the 8 features of this class catalogued on Europa, the naming categories run Celtic (5), Wales (3).

Feature class
a large area distinguished by its brightness or colour
Diameter
1,780 km
about the width of the Mediterranean
Coordinates
10.0° S, 75.0° W
Planetocentric, on Europa
Name approved
2007
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Celtic
Europe

What it would take to settle Tara Regio

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 10.0° S, 75.0° W.

Settlement difficulty here
57.7/ 100
Better than most of this world
Europa overall
60.9
3.2 easier than the median site
Ranked
1st
of 129 named places on Europa

What this spot has going for it is sunlight 98% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Europa gets. What works against it is temperature about -153 °C mean at this latitude.

Computed from Tara Regio'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 regio features on Europa