Solitudo Hermae Trismegisti
What Solitudo Hermae Trismegisti is
Solitudo Hermae Trismegisti is an albedo feature — a region named for how bright or dark it appears from a distance — on Mercury, centred at 45.0° S, 45.0° W in the Discovery quadrangle.
Where the name comes from
Albedo name for H-11, Discovery region. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1976.
What it would take to settle Solitudo Hermae Trismegisti
Mercury scores 46 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 45.0° S, 45.0° W.
What this spot has going for it is ground — flat ground — the easiest thing to land on and build across. What works against it is water — outside the ice-bearing latitudes.
Computed from Solitudo Hermae Trismegisti's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 68% of the model's weight had a basis here, and 3 axes were dropped as not applicable to Mercury (radiation geometry, earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Mercury 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.