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Europa · Regio · 5th largest named feature

Balgatan Regio

In Celtic mythology, pass to which the Tuatha Dé Dannan retreated before the battle with the Fir Bolgs.

What Balgatan Regio is

Balgatan Regio is a regio — a large area distinguished by its brightness or colour — on Europa, 2,500 km across, centred at 50.0° S, 30.0° W. It is the 5th largest named feature on Europa and the 2nd largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

In Celtic mythology, pass to which the Tuatha Dé Dannan retreated before the battle with the Fir Bolgs. The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2007, under the theme it applies to every regio on Europa. Of the 8 features of this class catalogued on Europa, the naming categories run Celtic (5), Wales (3).

Feature class
a large area distinguished by its brightness or colour
Diameter
2,500 km
about the width of the Mediterranean
Coordinates
50.0° S, 30.0° W
Planetocentric, on Europa
Name approved
2007
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Naming category
Celtic
Europe

What it would take to settle Balgatan Regio

Europa scores 60.9 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 50.0° S, 30.0° W.

Settlement difficulty here
60.6/ 100
Typical for this world
Europa overall
60.9
0.3 easier than the median site
Ranked
52nd
of 129 named places on Europa

What this spot has going for it is water same as everywhere else on this world. What works against it is temperature about -166 °C mean at this latitude.

Computed from Balgatan Regio'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 Europa (earth link, known ground). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on Europa 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 regio features on Europa