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Ceres · Crater · 82nd largest named feature

Shennong

Shen Nong; Chinese buffalo-headed agricultural deity, who taught humans the use of the plow together with other aspects of basic agriculture.

What Shennong is

Shennong is a crater — a circular depression, almost always an impact scar — on Ceres, 32.5 km across, centred at 69.0° N, 28.1° E. It is the 82nd largest named feature on Ceres and the 63rd largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Shen Nong; Chinese buffalo-headed agricultural deity, who taught humans the use of the plow together with other aspects of basic agriculture. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2017, under the theme it applies to every crater on Ceres. Of the 115 features of this class catalogued on Ceres, the naming categories run Roman (6), Sumerian (5), Egypt (5), Polynesia (3).

Feature class
a circular depression, almost always an impact scar
Diameter
32.5 km
about a marathon
Coordinates
69.0° N, 28.1° E
Planetocentric, on Ceres
Name approved
2017
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
China
Asia

What it would take to settle Shennong

Ceres scores 43.8 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 69.0° N, 28.1° E.

Settlement difficulty here
45.3/ 100
Typical for this world
Ceres overall
43.8
1.5 harder than the median site
Ranked
132nd
of 149 named places on Ceres

What this spot has going for it is water inside the polar zone where Ceres keeps its ice. What works against it is sunlight 36% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Ceres gets.

Computed from Shennong'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 Ceres (radiation geometry, earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Ceres 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 Ceres

All 115 craters on Ceres — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.