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Titan · Crater · 159th largest named feature

Selk

Egyptian goddess of knowledge, writing, education, and reptiles.

What Selk is

Selk is a crater — a circular depression, almost always an impact scar — on Titan, 80 km across, centred at 7.0° N, 161.0° E. It is the 159th largest named feature on Titan and the 5th largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Egyptian goddess of knowledge, writing, education, and reptiles. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2008, under the theme it applies to every crater on Titan. Of the 12 features of this class catalogued on Titan, the naming categories run Italy (1), Norse (1), New Guinea (1), Bella Coola (1).

Feature class
a circular depression, almost always an impact scar
Diameter
80 km
about the width of Yellowstone
Coordinates
7.0° N, 161.0° E
Planetocentric, on Titan
Name approved
2008
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Egypt
Africa

What it would take to settle Selk

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 7.0° N, 161.0° E.

Settlement difficulty here
32.3/ 100
Typical for this world
Titan overall
32.6
0.3 easier than the median site
Ranked
61st
of 304 named places on Titan

What this spot has going for it is sunlight 99% of the sunlight the sunniest latitude on Titan gets. What works against it is temperature about -179 °C mean at this latitude.

Computed from Selk'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 crater features on Titan

All 12 craters on Titan — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.