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Venus · Vallis · 474th largest named feature

Banumbirr Vallis

Arnhemland word for planet Venus.

What Banumbirr Vallis is

Banumbirr Vallis is a vallis — a valley — on Venus, 400 km across, centred at 7.0° S, 4.0° E in the Alpha Regio quadrangle. It is the 474th largest named feature on Venus and the 36th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Arnhemland word for planet Venus. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1997, under the theme it applies to every vallis on Venus. Of the 72 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run Egypt (3), China (3), India (3), Mayan (2).

Feature class
a valley
Diameter
400 km
about the length of the Grand Canyon
Coordinates
7.0° S, 4.0° E
Planetocentric, on Venus
Name approved
1997
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Alpha Regio
Map sheet on Venus
Naming category
Australia
Oceania

What it would take to settle Banumbirr Vallis

Venus scores 43 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 7.0° S, 4.0° E.

Settlement difficulty here
42.7/ 100
Typical for this world
Venus overall
43
0.3 easier than the median site
Ranked
877th
of 1,985 named places on Venus

What this spot has going for it is sunlight 99% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Venus gets. What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Banumbirr Vallis'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 Venus (radiation geometry, earth link). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Venus 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 vallis features on Venus

All 72 valles on Venus — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.