लाइव
Venus · Crater · 1099th largest named feature

Wharton

Edith; American writer (1862-1937).

What Wharton is

Wharton is a crater — a circular depression, almost always an impact scar — on Venus, 50.5 km across, centred at 55.7° N, 61.9° E in the Meskhent quadrangle. It is the 1099th largest named feature on Venus and the 55th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Edith; American writer (1862-1937). The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1985, under the theme it applies to every crater on Venus. Of the 881 features of this class catalogued on Venus, the naming categories run American (88), Russia (55), France (47), England (47).

Feature class
a circular depression, almost always an impact scar
Diameter
50.5 km
about a marathon
Coordinates
55.7° N, 61.9° E
Planetocentric, on Venus
Name approved
1985
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Meskhent
Map sheet on Venus
Naming category
American
North America

What it would take to settle Wharton

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 55.7° N, 61.9° E.

Settlement difficulty here
44.7/ 100
Typical for this world
Venus overall
43
1.7 harder than the median site
Ranked
1506th
of 1,985 named places on Venus

What this spot has going for it is known ground 8,818 km from Venera 9 (1975). What works against it is water same as everywhere else on this world.

Computed from Wharton'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 crater features on Venus

All 881 craters on Venus — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.