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Venus · Patera · 1020th largest named feature

Pocahontas Patera

Powhatan Indian peacemaker (1595-1617).

What Pocahontas Patera is

Pocahontas Patera is a patera — an irregular or scalloped-edged crater, usually volcanic — on Venus, 78 km across, centred at 64.9° N, 49.4° E in the Fortuna Tessera quadrangle. It is the 1020th largest named feature on Venus and the 35th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Powhatan Indian peacemaker (1595-1617). The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1991, under the theme it applies to every patera on Venus. Of the 72 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run American (13), Russia (11), Great Britain (5), France (4).

Feature class
an irregular or scalloped-edged crater, usually volcanic
Diameter
78 km
about the width of Yellowstone
Coordinates
64.9° N, 49.4° E
Planetocentric, on Venus
Name approved
1991
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Fortuna Tessera
Map sheet on Venus
Naming category
Potawatomi
North America

What it would take to settle Pocahontas Patera

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 64.9° N, 49.4° E.

Settlement difficulty here
45.6/ 100
Harder than most of this world
Venus overall
43
2.6 harder than the median site
Ranked
1728th
of 1,985 named places on Venus

What this spot has going for it is known ground 7,680 km from Venera 9 (1975). What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Pocahontas Patera'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 patera features on Venus

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