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Titan · Mons · 82nd largest named feature

Lithui Montes

Name of a mountain range (Ered Lithui, Ash Mountains), the northern border of the land of Mordor from Middle-earth, the fictional setting in fantasy novels by J.R.R. Tolkien.

What Lithui Montes is

Lithui Montes is a mons — a mountain — on Titan, 200 km across, centred at 84.7° N, 112.6° W. It is the 82nd largest named feature on Titan and the 8th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Name of a mountain range (Ered Lithui, Ash Mountains), the northern border of the land of Mordor from Middle-earth, the fictional setting in fantasy novels by J.R.R. Tolkien. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2020, under the theme it applies to every mons on Titan.

Feature class
a mountain
Diameter
200 km
about 1.7 times shorter than the length of the Grand Canyon
Coordinates
84.7° N, 112.6° W
Planetocentric, on Titan
Name approved
2020
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
England
Europe

What it would take to settle Lithui Montes

Titan scores 32.6 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 84.7° N, 112.6° W.

Settlement difficulty here
35.3/ 100
Harder than most of this world
Titan overall
32.6
2.7 harder than the median site
Ranked
282nd
of 304 named places on Titan

What this spot has going for it is water inside the polar zone where Titan keeps its ice. What works against it is temperature about -180 °C mean at this latitude.

Computed from Lithui Montes's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 74% of the model's weight had a basis here, and 2 axes were dropped as not applicable to Titan (radiation geometry, earth link). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Titan 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 mons features on Titan

All 16 montes on Titan — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.