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Ganymede · Sulcus · 9th largest named feature

Phrygia Sulcus

Greek; kingdom in Asia Minor where Ganymede was born.

What Phrygia Sulcus is

Phrygia Sulcus is a sulcus — a set of parallel grooves and ridges — on Ganymede, 3,700 km across, centred at 12.0° N, 20.6° W. It is the 9th largest named feature on Ganymede and the 3rd largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Greek; kingdom in Asia Minor where Ganymede was born. 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
3,700 km
about the width of the United States
Coordinates
12.0° N, 20.6° W
Planetocentric, on Ganymede
Name approved
1979
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Greek
Europe

What it would take to settle Phrygia Sulcus

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 12.0° N, 20.6° W.

Settlement difficulty here
54.6/ 100
Typical for this world
Ganymede overall
55
0.4 easier than the median site
Ranked
89th
of 196 named places on Ganymede

What this spot has going for it is radiation geometry under closed field lines, the shielded part of the only magnetosphere on any moon. What works against it is temperature about -157 °C mean at this latitude.

Computed from Phrygia Sulcus'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.