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Titan · Lacuna · 256th largest named feature

Melrhir Lacuna

Intermittent lake (shott) in Algeria.

What Melrhir Lacuna is

Melrhir Lacuna is a lacuna — an irregular depression, read as the bed of a lake that has dried — on Titan, 23 km across, centred at 64.9° N, 147.4° E. It is the 256th largest named feature on Titan and the 12th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Intermittent lake (shott) in Algeria. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2010, under the theme it applies to every lacuna on Titan. Of the 13 features of this class catalogued on Titan, the naming categories run Australia (2), Kenya (1), India (1), Slovenia (1).

Feature class
an irregular depression, read as the bed of a lake that has dried
Diameter
23 km
about the length of Manhattan
Coordinates
64.9° N, 147.4° E
Planetocentric, on Titan
Name approved
2010
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Algeria
Africa

What it would take to settle Melrhir Lacuna

Titan scores 32.6 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, 147.4° E.

Settlement difficulty here
34.2/ 100
Typical for this world
Titan overall
32.6
1.6 harder than the median site
Ranked
271st
of 304 named places on Titan

What this spot has going for it is known ground 3,699 km from Huygens (2005). What works against it is temperature about -180 °C mean at this latitude.

Computed from Melrhir Lacuna'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 Titan (radiation geometry, earth link). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Titan 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 lacuna features on Titan

All 13 lacunae on Titan — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.