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Ganymede · Sulcus · 26th largest named feature

Nun Sulci

Egyptian; chaos; primordial ocean; held germ of all things.

What Nun Sulci is

Nun Sulci is a sulcus — a set of parallel grooves and ridges — on Ganymede, 1,500 km across, centred at 49.5° N, 43.6° E. It is the 26th largest named feature on Ganymede and the 18th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Egyptian; chaos; primordial ocean; held germ of all things. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 1979, under the theme it applies to every sulcus on Ganymede. Of the 35 features of this class catalogued on Ganymede, the naming categories run Assyro-Babylonian (13), Greek (7), Sumerian (7), Babylon (3).

Feature class
a set of parallel grooves and ridges
Diameter
1,500 km
about the length of California
Coordinates
49.5° N, 43.6° E
Planetocentric, on Ganymede
Name approved
1979
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Egypt
Africa

What it would take to settle Nun Sulci

Ganymede scores 55 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 49.5° N, 43.6° E.

Settlement difficulty here
60.8/ 100
Harder than most of this world
Ganymede overall
55
5.8 harder than the median site
Ranked
155th
of 196 named places on Ganymede

What this spot has going for it is water same as everywhere else on this world. What works against it is radiation geometry inside the open-field polar cap, where the plasma gets down.

Computed from Nun Sulci's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 84% of the model's weight had a basis here, and 2 axes were dropped as not applicable to Ganymede (earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Ganymede 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 sulcus features on Ganymede

All 35 sulci on Ganymede — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.